News from Berlin

New US Embassy in Berlin Triggers Architecture Debate

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: With the scaffolding finally gone, the US embassy building is causing controversy

Removal of the scaffolding from the US embassy construction site in Berlin has triggered fresh debate about this symbol of Washington's power on the site of the former Berlin Wall.

The embassy is set to be inaugurated on July 4, US Independence Day, but tourists are already snapping pictures of the building, which has a front door on prestigious Pariser Platz, with the Brandenburg Gate, French embassy and luxurious Adlon Hotel as neighbors.

Its completion fills the last gap on an upscale square that in less than two decades has turned into a gallery of contemporary architecture. The US project was delayed by years of wrangling with the city of Berlin over buffer zones to foil car bombings.

Lines of waist-high pillars are the most obvious security features around the four-storey sandstone building, which has its longest frontage not on the square but on a four-lane road, which is where most tourists in buses will see it first.

The embassy Web site says the design is intended to "provide an open yet secure presentation of America."

From the penthouse, US Ambassador William Timken will have a panorama of Berlin history all around him.

The view has been carefully composed to show the Quadriga horses on top of the Brandenburg Gate seeming to ride across the embassy's rooftop garden of native American grasses. Timken will also have a close-up view of the dome on the Reichstag and the Tiergarten park. To the south, the embassy faces the somber Holocaust Memorial, with the office towers of Potsdamer Platz, 400 meters (a quarter of a mile) away. Timken remembers standing on the site as a visitor to Germany in the early 1990s when it was weed-covered wasteland.

"The Berlin Wall had stood there just a short time before with the 'death strip' next to it," said Timken, who arrived as ambassador in 2005. "I couldn't have imagined it as the site for our embassy." He spoke of his "wonder" at the embassy's return to the historic site.