Embassy Row receives an exotic face lift

Washington — Surveying his newly completed official residence, Spain's ambassador to the United States enthuses, "The moment you get into these spaces you feel elation." That sense is contagious, because the envoy, Javier Ruperez, can entertain 500 guests for cocktails in his barrel-vaulted living room, a splendid arena hung with paintings on loan from the Prado and the Reina Sofia museums in Madrid.

Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jose Rafael Moneo, the 20,000-square-foot house also contains a formal dining room with an oak table that can seat 40. Moneo's multilevel creation -- an Iberian take on the cubic forms of Bauhaus architecture -- cascades down a steeply raked, narrow tract along Foxhall Road in northwest Washington.

Jose Maria Aznar, outgoing prime minister of Spain, dedicated the $10-million residence in January, the latest in a series of impressive embassy complexes built in the U.S. capital over the last few years. More major embassy projects are in the works.

Construction of an imposing Chinese mission, designed by I.M. Pei and his two sons, is due to get underway this year. Sweden is building a strikingly modern complex overlooking the Potomac River near the Kennedy Center. Switzerland has recently announced plans for a $10-million residence for its ambassador, designed by New York architect Steven Holl in conjunction with Swiss architect Justin Russli.

Construction crews work busily on still more renovations and expansions up and down Embassy Row, a flag-bedecked stretch of Massachusetts Avenue from Dupont Circle to the National Cathedral on Wisconsin Avenue. "Washington is a power center in the world, and embassies want to represent themselves well here," said Lenwood Dent, deputy head of the State Department's Office of Foreign Missions.

Although Spain's ambassadorial residence and embassy is earning acclaim, not everyone is pleased with the architectural quality of several other embassies going up around town. A new enclave for foreign missions, specially created by the State Department, has filled with an array of exotic and even cartoonish-looking structures.

Embassy buildings frequently have been used to project images of the countries they represent, effectively becoming large-scale advertisements for their nations. When the then-fledgling Federal Republic of Germany built a Washington embassy in 1964, it carefully chose a low-key design by West German architect Egon Eiermann. With the building's simple and humanely proportioned facade, the state that arose from Nazi Germany's ashes acquired a billboard image proclaiming that it had changed its bellicose ways.