The Bundesrat: Portrait of a Building
[Images of the interior decoration]
This decoration lends to the offices, the corridors and the plenary chamber a modern identity which forms, as it were, a complementary contrast and counterpart to the original walls, little of whose once-rich ornamentation today survives.
The dark smoked oak parquet with which the floors of most rooms are covered contrasts with the work-rooms’ wall claddings of either cherry wood or birch wood panelling. The furniture too reflects this specific combination. In the offices, session rooms and plenary chamber, tables of light-coloured wood are combined with darker seating. In the lobby and in the courtyards surrounding the plenary chamber, the visitor can take a moment’s rest in armchairs designed in classic modern style. The floor in these areas is made of natural, charcoal-coloured stone, framed in, in the case of the courtyards, by a band of glass. This latter detail serves to allow the daylight to penetrate into the ground-floor chambers beneath. The design of the corridors is decidedly functional. Their walls are finished with large grey-green surfaces executed in the stucco lustro technique, framed in by delicate strips of bronze. Their narrow joints repeat motifs from the friezes and decorative fields which formerly decorated these corridors.
The dark smoked oak parquet with which the floors of most rooms are covered contrasts with the work-rooms’ wall claddings of either cherry wood or birch wood panelling. The furniture too reflects this specific combination. In the offices, session rooms and plenary chamber, tables of light-coloured wood are combined with darker seating. In the lobby and in the courtyards surrounding the plenary chamber, the visitor can take a moment’s rest in armchairs designed in classic modern style. The floor in these areas is made of natural, charcoal-coloured stone, framed in, in the case of the courtyards, by a band of glass. This latter detail serves to allow the daylight to penetrate into the ground-floor chambers beneath. The design of the corridors is decidedly functional. Their walls are finished with large grey-green surfaces executed in the stucco lustro technique, framed in by delicate strips of bronze. Their narrow joints repeat motifs from the friezes and decorative fields which formerly decorated these corridors.