Berlin 2001: The New Chancellery Building
The current Chancellery building (opened in the spring of 2001) was designed by Charlotte Frank and Axel Schultes and was built by a joint venture of Royal BAM Group's subsidiary Wayss & Freytag and the Spanish Acciona from concrete and glass in an essentially postmodern style, though some elements of modernist style are evident. Occupying 12,000 square meters (129,166 square feet), it is also one of the largest government headquarters buildings in the world. By comparison, the new Chancellery building is eight times the size of the White House. A semi official Chancellor apartment is located on the top floor of the building. The 200 square meter two-room flat has thus far only been occupied by Gerhard Schröder; current Chancellor Angela Merkel prefers to live in her private apartment in Berlin.
Because of its distinctive but controversial architecture, journalists, tourist guides and some locals refer to the buildings as Kohllosseum (as a mix of Colosseum and former chancellor Helmut Kohl under whom it was built), Bundeswaschmaschine (federal washing machine, because of the round-shaped windows and its cubic form), or Elefantenklo (elephant loo).
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Famous quotes containing the words berlin and/or building:
“You’re not sick you’re just in love.”
—Irving Berlin (1888–1989)
“A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)