Berger + Parkkinen: Die Botschaften der Nordischen Länder, Berlin

The Embassies of the Nordic Countries in Berlin are political architecture of a particular kind, political architecture that does not assert a claim to power, but that is a self-portrait in the best sense of the word. The vision, which is already a reality on the level of architecture and design, aims to combine individual interests within a greater whole: the ancient democratic ideal that has perhaps never been expressed in a more beautiful and convincing gesture than in this combination of five countries, six buildings and six teams of architects, chosen in five national competitions for the individual buildings and a European competition for the central design concept.It is certainly no coincidence that such convincing symbolism of joint responsibility and action is not a success due to one of the European mammoth institutions but to the comparatively small Scandinavian countries Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland. Perhaps it is not even a coincidence that the con cept...