German Pavilion

Bungalow Germania

In contrast to the encyclopedic, retrospective nature of many national pavilions, Germany cut through with a single, theatrical statement. Outside, a standard-issue black Mercedes town car is parked at a jaunty angle to the pavilion, as if it has just raked up its gravel drive. Through the grand neoclassical portico of the Germania pavilion, one enters an understated, pseudo-Miesian interior -- all plateglass planes, travertine floors, heavy wooden sliding panels and self-assured geometric purity.

The German Chancellor's bungalow (1964) has been replicated in the pavilion.

The Bungalow Germania installation, by Swiss based German architects Alex Lehnerer and Savvas Ciriacidis is an almost-exact replica of the Kanzlerbungalow built in 1964 in Bonn, when that city was the capital of the Federal Republic -- and which served as the residence of Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The bungalow has been artfully recreated and dropped (with minimal alteration) at 1:1 scale into the space of the Germania pavilion, itself built in 1912 and revised significantly in 1938 -- when it was inaugurated by the Nazi party -- and again in 1964.
The German Chancellor's bungalow (1964) has been replicated in the pavilion.

Kohl's Wikipedia entry describes him as the 'architect' not only of Germany's reunification in 1990 but also of the Maastricht Treaty, which launched the social experiment that is the EU. The bungalow was originally commissioned to embody the values of a young democracy emerging from National Socialism.

Faced with a trouble-ridden political context, this clean gesture is a staged confrontation between the political and architectonic realities of two very different moments.