New US Embassy...

[Peikko 1,575]

The new US embassy to the Court of St James's has been designed, says the US state department, to "reflect the values of the American people". Just as well, perhaps, that its architects, KieranTimberlake, aren't being asked to reflect the values of the British people, otherwise we'd probably end up with a building in the guise of a footballer-style Kentucky Fried Georgian luxury mansion with a Cabe-approved Tesco attached and the whole caboodle opened by Justin Timberlake.

Luckily for London, the American people are considerably more sophisticated and less populist than we are. Here in Nine Elms, the new embassy will adopt the form of a giant glass box on stilts rising from a Princess Diana-style memorial park, complete with a lake and what appears to be a ha-ha. Seriously.

KieranTimberlake have a well-established track record designing nicely resolved college campuses, including those of Yale and Cornell. Given that the London embassy will be a cross between a secure compound and a political and cultural complex, the Philadelphia practice may well prove to be a sound, if unexciting, choice.

Keen for the building not to be seen as a Bush-era bunker – the vast new US embassy in Baghdad is about as diplomatic as a "shock 'n' awe" strike by the military – the design makes extensive use of glass, although this will be protected by a blast-resistant polymer skin.

Cool, remote and superficially transparent, the winning design does reflect what we can divine of the US political process. Nominally open to all and yet, in practice, tightly controlled, the system of US government and its prevailing culture, aped bad-temperedly in Britain, does indeed inform the brief to KieranTimberlake and their response to it.

Embassies have, however, for good reasons, become an awkward building type today. The days of pottering about in the fine library of the Eero Saarinen-designed US embassy in Grosvenor Square are long gone. All foreigners are suspect. They should keep their distance in future just as this defensive embassy, surrounded by corporate-style office blocks, will from them and, sadly, central London itself.

Link

I swear I could hear vultures or perhaps they were crows while I was reading that article

[Peikko 1,575]

US Ambassador is spoiling our view of the Thames with this boring glass embassy

British jurors, including Richard Rogers, have argued the building is unfit to represent the US in Britain

With a billion dollar budget and a prime site on the banks of the Thames, the plans for the new US embassy in Britain were intended to cement Washington's "special relationship" with London for decades to come.

But tonight's long-awaited unveiling of designs by US ambassador Louis Susman for one of the most expensive embassies ever built threatened to be overshadowed by a high-level spat.

The Guardian has learned that the only two British members of the seven-strong design jury "fought to the death" against their American counterparts in a failed bid to block a winning design which they argued was not world class and was unfit to represent the US in Britain. Lord Rogers, the architect of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and Lord Palumbo, the property developer and art collector, felt so strongly about the inadequacies of the winning design, they submitted a "minority report" setting out their case to the US state department in Washington, which commissioned the building.

As Susman unveiled the designs of the Philidephia-based firm of Kieran Timberlake – a 12-storey cube clad in a blastproof glass and plastic façade – it emerged the British jurors believe the Obama administration should have selected a rival design by a Californian designer, Thom Mayne, who won the Pritzker Prize, architecture's version of the Nobel, in 2005. They were overruled by the five Americans on the panel, including former ambassador Clyde Taylor.

Rogers and Palumbo are said to have thought the design was boring and "not good enough to represent one of the great nations in London", said sources familiar with the jury process. By contrast, they considered Mayne's design to be "touched by genius".

After the spat with two of the most prominent figures in British architecture, and both peers, a second diplomatic banana skin looms: the US government has yet to agree with HM Treasury about whether it will pay VAT on the building cost and the $1bn (£650m) price quoted yesterday did not include VAT. Susman said last night talks are continuing.

The embassy is set to become one of the most expensive in the world, cheaper only than America's fortress-like outposts in Baghdad and Islamabad.

In 2008 Washington announced a move out of the Mayfair building occupied since the beginning of the Kennedy era for security reasons. Attempts to fortify the building in such a built-up location proved difficult and the embassy's 1,000 staff had begun to outgrow the space.

But the decision to move to a new home on a vacant semi-industrial site in Wandsworth surrounded by a 30-metre blast zone, sparked fears that it planned a "fortress embassy" in south London. The UK government's own design advisers worried that early designs suggested a building that "turns its back" on the local area and lacks "a sufficiently civilising effect".

The designs unveiled yesterday suggest a medieval keep and even include a moat-like ditch along one side. James Timberlake, the lead architect, said that, inspired by European castles, he had tried to use the landscape to provide a defence against terror attacks and there would be "no fences and no walls".

"We hope the message everyone will see is that it is open and welcoming," he said. "It is a beacon of democracy – light filled and light emitting."

KieranTimberlake, little known outside the UK, was a surprise winner against three of America's most celebrated architects, all of whom have won the Pritzker.

Alongside Mayne were the firm of IM Pei, who designed the Louvre pyramid in Paris, and Richard Meier, who built the Getty Centre in Los Angeles. KieranTimberlake is best known for its buildings for Ivy League universities and environmentally-friendly design.

Contacted last night, Rogers declined to comment on his view of the building. "It was a very well-organised competition and I can't comment on the decision of the jury," he said. Palumbo could not be reached for comment.

Questioned about the row, Susman said simply: "The entire committee signed off on the project."

Paul Finch, the chairman of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, which will advise on whether the building should be granted planning consent, said the designs appeared to be of a high quality.

"It is a sophisticated cube," he said. "The designers have given a lot of attention to the environmental controls. This will stand out in an area that is due for a huge wave of development."

The plans feature an attempt to integrate defences in a park landscape using grass berms, a man-made lake and even a moat. The most iconic part of the Mayfair building is likely to remain. There are plans to relocate the bronze eagle which sits on the roof of the current embassy as a statue in the gardens.

The Mayfair building is earmarked for development as luxury apartments and a hotel after it was bought for an estimated £350m by the Qatari government.

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Madame, have you by chance seen the other competing designs? I'd love to see them.

nm, here they are:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemon...architects.html