The M2 project Swiss Embassy in Addis Ababa is a current, real project of the Swiss Confederation in Ethiopia and exemplarily addresses the task of using architecture to fulfill the representative tasks of a state in another country in the age of globalization.

The competition requirements include a room program without predestining the formal architecture. In particular, great importance is attached to a public presentation of the country of origin Switzerland and to the simultaneous consideration of the host country Ethiopia.

This raises the question of the practice of the draft for the seemingly contradictory specifications of such a project, which on the one hand should represent the country of origin, but at the same time should respect the host country and its context. In the first part of the seminar we will examine the juxtaposition of identities, architectural languages and functional disposition of embassy buildings on the basis of concrete examples. In the second part of the seminar we will look at other architectural typologies whose functions, characteristics and motifs are partly inherent in the type of message. Furthermore, we will analyse various approaches to historical embassy architecture, most of which were court architectures for foreign rulers.

Photo: Ariel Huber and Walter Rüegg, in: Maurer, Bruno (ed.): A Tropical House. The Embassy of Switzerland in New Delhi. Zürich 2014, p. 15