Linda Hales, an editor at The Washington Post, writes regularly on design and architecture. Photographer Thomas Quiggle is based in Washington, DC.

Residents of the House of Sweden,the new architectural showplace on Washington’s historic Georgetown riverfront, don’t quite walk on water to get to their apartments. But nearly so.

 The six-story glass-walled building, which was completed in October 2006, serves as embassy, exhibition space and corporate condominium. The 70,000-square-foot diplomatic headquarters is occupied chiefly by Ambassador Gunnar Lund and his staff. But along with their offices and public galleries filled with Swedish cultural exhibitions, two floors are set aside for 19 apartments. One of them, furnished by the Swedish home design purveyor IKEA for an imaginary executive, is a model of urban waterfront living.

 The design zeitgeist of both the apartment interior and the architecture by Gert Wingardh and Tomas Hansen marries Scandinavian simplicity, modernity and spare elegance with unusual vistas of water—rippling under foot, cascading in the glass walls and coursing just beyond them.

  The setting—on the last semi-wild promontory of land in bustling Georgetown—is right out of a Scandinavian fairy tale. Rock Creek ambles by one side and the broad tidal Potomac River substitutes for a front yard. At dawn and dusk, sculls glide upriver and back to their berths in a boathouse next door. Cyclists and runners ply a river path, which extends for miles along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal.

 The Swedish architects took full advantage of the site to honor their nation’s passion for the outdoors. Their vocabulary of wood—imported Swedish maple—and glass also reflects the diplomatic goal of transparency. Residents and visitors must pass through the new building’s  entry foyer flanked by two waterfalls, their torrents sandwiched safely between panels of glass. A wraparound window wall in the lobby frames stunning views of the Potomac as it flows by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

 The Swedish design tour deforce is the lobby’s grand staircase, which descends over a scrim of water designed to look like a tarn, one of the mysterious black ponds found in the deepest north woods. Water lapping the black marble basin appears to extend right under an exterior glass wall and onto an open-air terrace, which is cantilevered over Rock Creek. The line between indoors and out is perfectly blurred, just as the designers intended.

 The IKEA suite on the fourth floor overlooks an island park named for Theodore Roosevelt, the “conservation President,” where dense woods filter the bustle of commuter traffic on a nearby freeway while providing a safe haven for Canada geese, ducks and seagulls. It would be easy to conclude that the recreational nature of the location inspired the playful interior design. But Mats Nilsson, IKEA’s creative director for the American market, says he was guided by the very Swedish ideal of “good design.”

 A typically Scandinavian décor of natural materials, clear colors and bold, contemporary  patterns takes nothing away from the extraordinary river vistas. The simple gray door to the apartment opens to a foyer demarcated by a chartreuse wall and a Marimekko-like cotton hanging with a whimsical black-and-white cactus motif. From this small space, a long hall, painted a dramatic charcoal and dominated by a graphic print of Audrey Hepburn, leads past natural wood-and-glass bookcases to the central living area overlooking the Potomac.

 There, Nilsson set the scene with sophisticated upholstered pieces from IKEA’s new Stockholm collection, with oversized red velvet chairs and a white sofa grouped around a graphic, black-and-white striped rug. Black leather ottomans and a translucent glass table lend glamour, while a collection of eight stainless-steel hanging baskets serves as a whimsical dangling sculpture. The result is “a gorgeous place to relax, entertain or just hang out,” Nilsson says, as well as “a great space to just kick up your feet and unwind.”

The adjacent dining area is equally lighthearted, with one red wall setting off a natural wood table, black-painted chairs and simple white tableware. Over the table, a hanging lamp of layered white plastic petals in the spirit of Danish designer Poul Henningsen’s classic Artichoke lamp provides a touch of Scandinavian-style romance.

 One corner of the living space has been set aside as a home theater. Two rattan hanging chairs layered with fluffy white sheepskins define the space. Window treatments consist of nothing more complicated than panels of fabric in black-and-white fantasy sea-creature motifs. Nilsson’s playful furnishings make the point that a corporate chieftan’s pad need not resemble a banker’s office to make a statement. In this case, the audiovisual technology from Bang & Olufsen, another Swedish brand, would make the inheritors of Ingmar Bergman and ABBA feel right at home. Behind the home theater and living area is an open kitchen where black granite counters are reflected in black glass backsplashes every bit as glamorous as the audio-visual equipment.

 The bedroom at the back of the apartment is spare and modern, with a woven rattan headboard, black, white and red cotton throws and stacked end tables made of bent plywood, a nod to such Scandin- avian masters as Alvar Aalto.

Ared lacquer-look cupboard provides enough storage for an overnight stay.  Happily, the bedroom opens to a sybaritic dressing area with floor-to-ceiling built-ins. Throughout the 1,949-square-foot apartment, panels of color define the sense of place. There are no moldings or fussy details, in keeping with the ideals of Swedish modernism, which has long revered the idea of simple, functional housing accessible to all. Apartments in the new embassy building range in size from 800 to 3,000 square feet. Some have been converted to offices and executive suites, but two families with children have moved in so far. “We try to take the best of two worlds, the Scandinavian style and the open American floor plan,” says Gunilla Ekberg, the building’s general manager, of the apartment layouts. She hopes to rent out the IKEA-furnished apartment unit. Until that time, the space serves purely as a showcase for prospects—and for 21st-century Swedish style. “Anyone who likes it and wants to keep the furnishings, we are open to discussion,” Ekberg says. The House of Sweden has unusual amenities, even for Washington. On any given day, the ambassador may be entertaining the deputy prime minister on the grand staircase, and the latest Swedish fashions or a Saab 9-3 Aero convertible may be on display in the lobby. As for the waterfall inside the embassy, it’s just part of the everyday special effects of contemporary Swedish style. On a recent visit, Ekberg stopped to describe the shallow pond under the staircase as “a tarn in early March, when the ice begins to break up.” The bottom is not yet invisible, so the contractor has been asked to darken the caulk between the slabs of stone. Says Ekberg, “We’re not going to give up until we really have expressed the Swedish nature.”