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U.S. Embassy Bid Goes to Santa Monica Firm

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

U.S. Ambassador Charles Redman unveiled the design of the future American embassy in Germany on Wednesday: a four-story, cream-colored structure capped with a large copper-green lantern, designed by the Santa Monica architectural firm of Moore Ruble Yudell.

The selection of a design marked the end of a 1 1/2-year competition for the embassy, which is scheduled to move to Berlin by mid-1999 as reunited Germany brings its seat of government back from the current Cold War-era digs in Bonn.

The chosen design manages not only to be “remarkable in its own right” but also to “blend in well with the Berlin cityscape,” Redman said in a news conference alongside principals and associates from Moore Ruble Yudell, as well as from the Los Angeles planning and engineering firm of Gruen Associates. Gruen will handle the technical side of the project.

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Neither firm has participated in the creation of a U.S. embassy before, although Gruen is currently working on the new federal courthouse in Orange County and Moore Ruble Yudell is known in architectural circles for its designs of UC Berkeley’s Walter A. Haas School of Business, the California Center for the Arts in Escondido and the Oceanside Civic Center in San Diego County.

Redman declined to reveal the future embassy’s cost, but sources have estimated the price tag at about $100 million. Redman said Washington expects to finance the new building by selling other real estate in Germany. He called the future embassy “the most important new [building] project to be undertaken by the State Department in this decade.”

Indeed, new U.S. embassies are not built every day, and particularly not in countries with Germany’s strategic and economic importance or with its historic sensitivities. The last time the U.S. government held a competition for an embassy design was in 1955, and the resulting building--in London--has been controversial, with critics saying it does not match the feel of its neighborhood.

About 70 architectural firms responded to the State Department’s call for proposals this time. The group was narrowed to 13 semifinalists in early 1995 and then to six finalists in April of that year.

Although the jury completed its deliberations in September, the State Department waited to announce the winner until this year’s federal budget impasse was resolved.

When the Moore Ruble Yudell design is built, it will sit on one of the highest-visibility sites in all Berlin: just two doors down from the historic Brandenburg Gate, a central, pillared monument that symbolizes this city the way the Eiffel Tower stands for Paris.

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The Reichstag, or German parliament, will be just a stone’s throw away, and the front door will open onto Pariser Platz, the end point of the famous Unter den Linden, once Berlin’s most elegant boulevard for strolling, seeing and being seen.

Pariser Platz and Unter den Linden used to be studded with small palaces, elite hotels and embassies--including the original American embassy--but almost all of these were reduced to rubble during World War II. The socialist architects of East Germany replaced some of the buildings with drearily functional glass-and-aluminum boxes, and the neighborhood was further defaced in 1961 by the building of the Berlin Wall.

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Now that the wall is gone and Berlin is no longer a divided city, the construction of a new U.S. embassy on the original grounds is hoped to be an important step in restoring Pariser Platz to its former grandeur.

“The State Department couldn’t afford to make a mistake here,” said Cecily Young, Moore Ruble Yudell’s “team captain” for the embassy project. “This is comparable to building something on the Mall in Washington.”

The winning design attempts to physically represent America’s ideals of openness and democracy, while at the same time complying with Berlin’s strict and controversial requirements governing the way buildings on its historic downtown plazas may look.

When the city reunited and it was clear that a construction boom was imminent, officials tried to avoid an ugly hodgepodge of competing architectural styles by ruling that builders must work primarily in stone, design buildings that go all the way to the edges of lots and limit facade heights to 22 meters, or about four or five stories.

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Many architects have complained that the rules are too constraining and will make Berlin look boring and squat.

But Young said that blending the strict Berlin aesthetic requirements with the State Department’s specialized needs and her firm’s own ambitions to create a dignified and timeless building was “the most incredible challenge one could hope for in one’s life as an architect.”

She said that the winning design tries to evoke a “dialogue” between the 1794 Brandenburg Gate and the future embassy: a conversation symbolic of the relationship between Germany and the United States.

The idea of a conversation is to be conveyed by the materials and details of the exterior, which echo the colors and proportions of the gate. Colorist Tina Beebe--who gave the Haas School its foresty deep greens and reddish browns--selected the blue-green tones of weathered copper as a way of making a visual connection with a verdigris copper statue of the goddess Victory on top of the gate.

One of the building’s most noticeable features will be a large copper-colored lantern on the roof, which will burn night and day. Moore Ruble Yudell principal Buzz Yudell said the lantern is supposed to “provide a new light, both literally and symbolically, on Pariser Platz,” evoking democracy and perhaps even reminding attentive passersby of the light in the crown of the Statue of Liberty.

Just beneath the lantern will be one of the most select meeting rooms in Berlin: the ambassador’s “pavilion,” a library and dining room where the ambassador will receive America’s most important visitors. The windows of the room are planned to look across a formal roof-garden to a breathtaking view of the Victory statue, called the Quadriga because her chariot is pulled by four copper horses.

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“We hope it will be the most desirable invitation in Berlin to be asked to lunch there,” Redman said.

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