Czech Republic Embassy in Ethiopia

The German University in Cairo

Project idea

My Concept is to express the cultural level and tradition of Czech architecture within the context of Ethiopia, so I got this idea of taking some few features from Prague 4 different districts and use them in the 4 main embassy buildings. The official embassy building was inspired by "old town district" spires but i did it in a more modernized Way, then the staff residence building was closely related to "lesser town district" as they both consist of houses surrounded by their own private functions , and for the Ambassador villa i filled some "castle district" features in to it such as the private garden and garden. Last building the consular and visa building i tried to make it as modern as i can just like the "New town district".

Project description

For he site all the 4 buildings have a direct linear connection through a path which control all the movement of the place. I used the slope which is already existing so that the villa is on 2 m high to give it a more private atmosphere.
The entrance of the consular and the visa building takes you directly to the waiting area where you can communicate with the staff through the consular windows and the offices are in the back , having their own private exit and a view to a small greenery . The roof of the consular is gets higher and sharp in a point to emphasize the entrance.
The entrance of the embassy building is shaded with a long roof , the entrance takes you to the entrance hall which is an atrium covered with glass , this atrium has a seating area and the stairs , mainly the ground floor consist of the representatives area like lounges ,assembly room and dinning room.The first floor consist of office section A because it needed to be private from the other sections . The second floor consist of office section B ,C and D with a private part for office section C .On the fist and second floor most of the offices have exit to an outdoor terrace.
The staff residence buildings are two blocks each block has two floors the first block has 4 apartments and the second one has 6 apartments .
The ambassador villa consist of two floors the ground floor is the representative part and the entrance hall have a view to the pool and the first floor has the private rooms , the living, the dinning and an outdoor terrace.

Technical information

The site is located at Bole Kifle ketema Kebele 6, Addis Ababa ,
Ethiopia. The challenge is to design five buildings Official Embassy Building ,Consular and Visa Building , Ambassador villa , Staff Residence building and Local Workforce Building.The land area is 13.304 m2 and the buildings area is 2.834 m2.
The safety distance is 10 m from all the buildings to the Fence except the official building with a distance of 20 m and larger.
The cladding of the embassy and the consular is an engraved horizontal concrete panels, one of the reasons the high performance insulation which could help in Ethiopia sunny weather and also it has a good performance towards the rainy weather while most of the months have rain in Ethiopia.
For the ambassador villa and the staff residence building i mostly used reinforced concrete and paint.