ABSTRACT
Should not there be a relationship between the public principle of democracy and the outer and inner transparency and accessibility of her buildings?
The promotion of transparency ideology and the use of transparent building techniques in parliamentary architecture reached their apotheosis in the architect Günter Behnisch’s design for the Bonn Bundestag building (Figure 6.1). Whereas Hans Schwippert had used a modest amount of transparency to signal the desire for democracy, Behnisch seemed to use transparency in order to celebrate the successful establishment of a democratic system.2 After all, Behnisch was able to look at the successes of 40 years of Modell Deutschland (Model Germany) with pride. And while Behnisch was fully conscious of Germany’s totalitarian past, the fragility of democracy, and the many failures of the Federal Republic, he chose to focus the rhetoric suppor ting his building design on Germany’s many postwar achievements and a positive view of political identity. In the hundreds of articles, essays, interviews, and other publications about the project, Behnisch promotes the new Bundeshaus as a showcase for pluralism in the Federal Republic, freedom of speech, participatory democracy and, above all, German democracy at work.3 The press is surprisingly rife with praise for Behnisch’s work and devoid of any critical voice, any questioning of his and the parliament’s stated goals for the building. But as with the Schwippert project, the architecture of the Behnisch Bundeshaus is only partially transparent despite the
tremendous quantity of see-through glass used, the open forms, plans, and sections. Also like the Schwippert project, the Behnisch building represents a desire this time not for democracy per se but for an ideal democracy, for one with perfect transparency. More than anything, however, Behnisch’s choices underscore the mythological nature of transparency ideology and raise the question: why transparency?
