Is the Embassy of Sweden, housed in the stylishly modern new House of Sweden building at 2900 K Street, the new D.C. nightlife hot spot? A week or so ago, we noticed on Facebook’s omnipresent news feed that a few friends will be attending the House of Sweden After Dark cocktail party on Friday, an event the embassy is throwing in conjunction with the opening of their new Innovation & Technology art exhibition. Over the next few days, more and more and more people kept signing up. The Facebook group alone now has over 2100 yeses, with another 650 maybes. That’s an enormous turnout for a cocktail night at an embassy. Can the House of Sweden even hold that many people?
Not really, the embassy’s marketing coordinator, Linda Tocchini-Valentini, told DCist. The House of Sweden’s actual capacity is approximately only 400, so if you go, be prepared to stand in line.
“We did not expect it to be as popular and become so big,” Tocchini-Valentini said. Still, she hopes the event will be able to accommodate everyone who shows up, on a rolling basis, letting more people in as others leave to head elsewhere.
The event itself sounds pretty neat – a $10 donation gets you an open bar from 8 p.m. to 11 featuring, of course, Svedka vodka, plus music and interactive art surrounded by the building’s extremely cool minimalist design. Still, the potential turnout also seems to show what a powerful tool Facebook can be — Tocchini-Valentini said although she also sent out Evites and emails through the embassy’s existing mailing list, she had never used Facebook for an event before.
The building houses the Swedish embassy and trade representatives as well as exhibits, and has hosted concerts before, such as Ane Brun, who we recommended seeing awhile ago. The building was inaugurated in late 2006 by the King and Queen of Sweden, and has won some architecture awards. The is the first in the series of House of Sweden After Dark events, however. Tocchini-Valentini said she hopes to schedule them approximately every 2-3 months, to coincide with the embassy’s rotating art exhibitions.
Sommer Mathis contributed
