Swedish Lantern

Weather resistance for the building is provided by white plastic laminate panels made by German company Resopal. The Resopal panels sit behind the glass rain screen. Two Resopal panels sandwich a ¾-inch polyurethane foam core. The outer Resopal panel has a light wood pattern, while the inner one has a dark-gray finished surface. Resopal is insulated and nonfading, and the panels are customized to work with SGS’s SG2000 system.

Site & Flood Control Construction of the six-story building was complicated by a difficult 16-acre site, which sits near the confluence of Rock Creek and the Potomac River and lies squarely in a floodplain. Yet the client’s desire to embrace the water’s edge and allow unobstructed views of the natural landscape argued against a design that incorporated high, solid walls. To decrease the threat of flooding, the architects raised the lobby level 1 foot above the 100-year floodplain. But the lower level conference and exhibition floor, whose expansive plate-glass walls open to Rock Creek on the east façade, is exposed to rising waters. A single level of underground parking beneath the lower floor is even more susceptible (see image gallery).

The solution was to incorporate into the façade steel jambs that support Presray Stop Logs, aluminum beams that are stored on site and can be stacked horizontally to build a temporary flood wall. Rubber gaskets are integral to the design of the beams, to provide a seal, and the beams can be bolted together for extra strength as soon as a flood warning occurs. In addition, because the site surface is 6 feet below Rock Creek’s 100-year floodplain, the embassy is anchored to bedrock with a complex system of 130 cable tie-downs and a solid mat foundation to resist the building’s natural tendency to float. All of the mechanical systems are housed in the adjacent North Building (not on the floodplain), a sister project on which VOA also served as architect of record. VOA used the parking level shared by the two buildings to transfer the mechanicals, running them up through the shafts at House of Sweden.

Lobby The architect’s extensive use of maple paneling and an artful hand-carved door into the embassy reception area recall the importance of wood in Swedish interiors. But the emphasis is on the ceiling, where Wingårdh sought to produce a cloudlike effect of light and shadow. There, an irregular pattern of 1½-inch-diameter holes is drilled in the panels, which are maple veneer on a gypsum substrate, manufactured by Swedish company Gustafs. Above the holes is a scrim of translucent white polyester, which in turn is illuminated by 4-foot-long fluorescent strips mounted on the underside of the structural slab, about 18 inches above the ceiling panel. The lights share space with the M/E/P ductwork and electrical conduits, but this doesn’t pose a problem, because the area is not used as a return-air plenum (all of the return air is separately ducted). Seeming to glow from within, the ceiling “was never meant to represent literal cloud formations, but to abstractly simulate the light conditions on the ground when clouds pass overhead,” explains Wick.