Südwestpresse 08.2015

German means high-quality and innovative

More and more German embassies and consulates are housed on office floors of high-rise buildings. The Stuttgart-based architectural firm Dittel Architekten has developed a corporate design for the interior of these institutions that is meant to represent Germany abroad in an appropriate manner.

“Our office structure with architects, interior designers and communications designers is particularly suitable for this task,” says Managing Director Frank Dittel. Moreover, the Stuttgart office, which also has a branch office in Berlin, has also specialized in brand architecture.

With its outline for the corporate design, the office won the competition tendered by the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning.

“At the outset, we collected keywords on what is considered typically German in a brainstorming session,” the Berlin office manager Andreas Blödow explains. “The terms were sorted into categories and resulted in a coherent picture in the end,” he adds. This is how the “Germany brand” emerged, which in terms of design was reflected in a clear form and which stood for attributes such as functional, pragmatic, precise, high-quality and innovative.

In addition, the architects developed the key message of “Community” in the context of the foreign policy guidelines of the Federal Government and transferred it to their design. For example, they convey transparency through a modern and open space organization and visual connections that facilitate communication. Furniture that promotes a sense of community, from the group workplace and the bar table to the lounge, provides an opportunity to exchange ideas and meet people.

“Our main focus was to break up the classic office floor,” explains Dittel. The result is a floor plan that loosely places open and closed zones next to each other while still following the strict security precautions required in consulates and embassies.

Open room units as well as protected objects such as the office of the head of services are arranged around the mostly central, dense functional core that houses an archive, a warehouse and the building’s utility room.

In terms of interior design, the open or transparent zones, which feature metal and glass, are balanced by the functional core that is panelled in fine walnut and has a more static effect. “The result is a contrast between lightness and intense solidity”, according to the competition jury. Clarity, simplicity and elegance were the convincing aspects of the work. The restrained signage is subordinated to the architecture. Carpet tiles in varying greys, silver metal sockets, sun-yellow armchairs providing spots of colour and the brown of the walnut panels form a well-tempered colour scheme.

“The process of creating a corporate design has not been finalized yet, and we are in the process of finding out how individual elements can touch on the regional characteristics of the federal states,” says Dittel. The aim is to develop a structural handbook for corporate design by the spring of 2016. According to the firm’s own information, the Stuttgart architectural office will have built the first show floor by mid-2017.