Czech embassy in Addis Ababa

Tbilisi State Academy of Arts (TSSA)

Project idea

Beyond the security requirements and technicalities of the brief, our consideration was to create a positive tension between the obvious and the staged. We wanted to display the semiotic interplay between design features projecting formality, seriousness, self-assurance, avoid a formalism insisting on those values and preserve a perception of naturalness and simplicity.

Project description

In working through our design we wanted to combine the best of both worlds : the constructed and the natural. We regard an embassy as constituting not so much the building as the people entrusted with the diplomatic mission and activity to the host country. The resulting physical building allowing for that diplomatic activity is necessarily, as with all architecture, a social construction. The focus guiding our design therefore has been on considering the experience of the people coming to, working and living in the building. Our primary emphasis has been on the building as a living space.
The layout, shape, juxtaposition of buildings, use of water, vegetation, trees, lighting and colour are not to be interpreted as an ornamental addition to some core capture of physical space realized in a physical building. They conspire to translate our concern with buildings as a personal space. As succeeding people come to work and live in this embassy in Addis Ababa, to visit and avail of its services we trust that they will continue to experience the embassy as a relationship between people than a mere physical construction. Here, all those using this space should feel ‘at home’.

Technical information

The buildings are built with concrete walls and are faced with travertine, brick and stone. Entrances are from the south, north and east. The southern and eastern entrance is the official entrance. The whole area is fenced with a concrete wall, with a height of 3 m.
Outside we have a green area, pots, trees and water planes to achieve a greater comfort and avoid heat islands.

Co-authors

Nino Sanikidze, Nino Sesiashvili

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