Deborah Ascher Barnstone

Washington State University

Text & Architecture at the Behnisch Bundeshaus

In the hands of Guenter Behnisch and his firm, Behnisch & Partner, the Bonn

Bundeshaus became an essay in the potential relationships between

architecture and text. The Bundeshaus was the new seat of the West German

parliament completed in 1992 but vacated for the Reichstag in 1999. At the

time it was designed, however, Benisch & Partner fully believed they were

creating the first permanent home for the West German parliament since the

war. The structure Behnisch's project replaced was hastily designed and

constructed in 1948 and 1949 to accommodate the newly formed West German

government. At the time, parliamentarians and West Germans alike were

convinced that the new government, capital and its infrastructure were

purely provisional, and that the separation of Germany into two parts was

temporary, so little care was placed in the design execution. The

provisional construction was cheap, sloppy, and never adequate. By the time

Behnisch & Partner received the commission in the 1980s, West Germany

believed the division of East and West would continue indefinitely. Further,

West German democracy was fully established and successful. The parliament

desired a home that was not only technically adequate but also symbolically

representative of West German democracy, its tenets, its successes, and its

position in the world. Behnisch & Partner embraced these goals

wholeheartedly designing a building whose formal, material and spatial

transparency reflect the new transparency in postwar West German government

and society. At the same time, they used text in a multitude of ways to

extend the symbolic message inherent in the building's form, material and

space. Text is inscribed on glass facades, suspended from ceilings,

supported on conventional signs, and hung from furniture. The text therefore

becomes a part of the architecture as much as it is inscribed upon it. At

the same time, the content is often spatial or architectural. The types of

text used are words and phrases from conventional signage, excerpts from the

German Constitution, the Basic Law, and poems related to life in West

Germany since 1945. Here, text is architecture and architecture is text.

The relationship between verbal and non-verbal representation is complex and

multi-layered. The two systems sometimes act as parallel vehicles for

conveying the same message, other times the text complements the

architectural moves, in still other instances text and architecture are

positioned in a dialog with one another. The building was intended as a

built representation of the state. The transparent materials and spaces are

meant as analogs for transparency in government and society, namely, the

freedoms of speech, press, conscience, and access present in contemporary

Germany. The verbal representations such as the excerpts from the Basic Law

concerning just these fundamental rights help the visitor understand the

non-verbal representation system by alluding to it. The text is not

explanatory, however; it is a parallel representation of the same ideas

embodied in the architecture. On the other hand, poems by West German writer

Ernst Jandl use words as graphic symbols arranged in visual patterns that

are as whimsical as the architectural elements. The poems often use humor to

question the truth of the very values embodied in the building reminding the

visitor that the transparent society may be as much myth as fact.