Embassy of the Czech Republic Addis Abeba, Ethiopia

Hawassa University

Project idea

The concept of this design questions the relevance of setting up a cultural monument building in a nearly slum gridded urban neighborhood. Instead making the embassy complex part of the society would be relevant for both the Czech’s interest to make the embassy the business card of Czech Republic and the society who needs an open space and an access at the same time.
DESIGN GOAL
The primary goal of this design is to reflect Czech’s culture and architecture to Ethiopia. While doing it, we consider the society who live around the site. From the analysis we made, the people need an access and an open space. Because of the existence of the site the society loose one of the main thing that cost to be Ethiopian- which is social bond. We believe an open space with a festive activity on, that include the society, would be an adequate way to introduce Czech and satisfy the society by tighten their social bond.
The other goal of the design is to minimize the life cost of the embassy complex. We provide a roof system with solar panels on. The solar panels would generate enough amount of electricity to all blocks. Ethiopia is one of a few countries which get full sun light every single month. Ethiopians call their country “A THIRTEEN MONTH GRACE CONTRY”. we believe the provision of solar panels is going to make the life cost of the embassy to be less.

Project description

Czech is full of history and architecture. When someone walk through Prague’s street, he/she see a pattern that explicitly explains the country as one- which we clearly find the design elements on the ancient architecture of Europe. Those design elements include, symmetry, balance, order, rhythm and detailed wall and roof elements. These elements have their own meaning, most of them are related with religious believes.
We now are living in an advanced and modern era. Minimal and small detailed architecture is the ones we are now favored to live on. The delegate balance between ancient and modern architecture of Czech explains the country perfectly. so, this perfectly symmetrical, balanced and mannered architecture of Czech is transformed in to a modern, dynamic and self-explanatory design icon. We use sustainability as a combining idea to bind them.
For this reason, in order to make a clear visualization of the dynamism idea on the project, we made the form to be a growing simple boxes. We set a design theme on the CD and that theme is vividly visible in all the front elevation of the form and the only difference is the growth it made. The growth of this design theme is very slow. One can see the difference in the height but couldn’t tell it’s growing until the last theme of the design is seen. It is this +1.5m and -1.5m floor differences do the trick, that this building stays in a firm form that one can vividly or vaguely tell “what’s behind the form making it so simple and complex at the same time?”

Technical information

All the necessary technical information is written on the pictures.

Co-authors

Tinsae Gebre