New German Embassy building to be built by mid-2020 and to take up 5,000 m2

The Embassy of Germany in Kneza Milosa Street in Belgrade has been demolished and will be succeeded by a new one. The old building was raised in 1979, under a project by the architect Bogdan Ignjatovic. He pushed the AB skeletal structure, beams and columns included, forward to the facade plane, thereby creating a kind of a concrete grid.

The first indication that the building might be demolished appeared in 2009, when a public architectural contest for a new building opened. No first prize was awarded at this contest, but the solution of the Kuehn Malvezzi studio from Berlin, which won the second prize, displayed a humane approach to protecting this specific architectural feature, incorporating the concrete grid in the design.

However, Germany did not want to establish a visual-cultural continuity, so they chose a team of architects from the Munich-based Karl und Probst (KarlundP) studio as the designers of the new embassy building.

The German authors offered an attractive solution, with two atria, dominated by a simple, clean, cubic form. The stone slabs on the facade are to be made from off-white marble extracted in the territory of Serbia. With its narrow window openings and a low, slightly claustrophobic entrance, the facade alludes to fortifications, emphasizing the security aspect of each important diplomatic representation. Observing the front of the building, the architecture is dominated by symmetry and harmony.

The German Embassy moved out of the old building back in 2012, but the facility remained empty and semi-demolished for a few years, until the final demolition and a gradual construction of the new building started a few years ago. The new building, which will take up over 5,000 m2, should be completed by mid-2020.

Ambasada SR Nemačke Beograd

Kuehn Malvezzi Berlin

Karl und Probst Munich

Bogdan Ignjatović

old German embassy building

AB skeletal construction

concrete grid

demolition of German embassy building

public architectural contest for new German embassy building

marble