By Patricia H. Kushlis
All things considered,
the design selected for the new American Embassy in London(
see photo left) could have been much worse.
Who knows, perish the thought, we might have ended up with a replica of the State
Department.
The projected prickly-pear
glass encased cube designed by the Philadelphia firm Kieran Timberlake surrounded
by grass, trees, concrete and a moat with sky garden for the Ambassador that stands out like a beacon on a corner on the second floor below the
roof doesn’t exactly exude charm.
Neither
does it emit a warm fuzzy welcoming feeling. But when security trumps design
what else can be expected.
Prickly-pear in vogue now?
Prickly-pear skin must be in vogue among the architectural set now – one also covers
the two geodesic domes that comprise the new and controversial cultural
center in Singapore called Esplanade - Theatres by the Bay. There it’s compared to –
among other printable and unprintable things - the exterior surface of twin
durians.
In any event, “the ground floor colonnade of concrete
pillars” in the new competition winning US Embassy London design is not exactly
novel despite what some might suggest. Rather it is reminiscent of the ground
floor entrance to the US Embassy in Athens,
a building designed by Walter Gropius sixty years ago. That building – inspired by Bauhaus architecture
and the Parthenon - was completed in 1961 when US Embassies were considered an
integral part of the US
public presence abroad and top architects were commissioned to design them. Now the visual seems to have shrunk and is principally
relegated to a few paintings by American artists that hang inside Ambassadors’
residences. The boxy cube shape, of course, is a clear transplant from architect Eero Saarinen's US Embassy on Grosvenor Square that will likely be turned into a hotel once US Mission vacates it. Hmm: wonder how much that Ambassador's suite will go for.
Photo above left: Singapore, Esplanade, Theatres by the Bay, by PHKushlis November 2009.
Regardless, the US Embassy in Athens
was completed nine years before two Cypriot terrorists chose it to register
their discontent with US
foreign policy thus beginning a long list of terrorist acts against that
Embassy on one of the Greek capital's main boulevards. The Cypriot
nationalists attempted to detonate a bomb in the women’s restroom in the
Embassy’s basement in 1970 – or so I was told at the time.
Fortunately, their efforts failed. Instead
they incinerated themselves in a car parked in an Embassy lot then used by
employees and visitors alike. The blast also blew out some of the Embassy’s
plate glass windows, destroyed a few neighboring cars in the parking lot but the only
human casualties were the Cypriot pair themselves.
A boon, at least, to Mayfair residents
I suppose the upcoming $1 billion plus five acre US Embassy
building project near the Thames – by far the most expensive US Embassy
construction anywhere - destined for that river’s south shore to be situated in a warehouse
and gay bar district will, at the very least, go down well with Mayfair
District residents who have loudly protested the intrusive eye-sore security
barriers erected around the current US Embassy building on Grosvenor Square in
London’s center in 9/11’s wake.
An aside: Looks like the Embassy also has problems with
unpaid “congestion charges” to the tune of about 32 million pounds that US diplomats working there have refused
to pay because they claim exemption from British taxes. The Brits don’t see it that way.
Fort Knox on the Thames
In reality, since gaining entrance to an American Embassy these days is
akin to that of entering Fort
Knox, it likely doesn’t
matter much where a new one is situated.
More and more such buildings are well removed from city centers where
business, government and media still converge to remote - often suburban or even ex-urban- locations
for post 9/11 security reasons. I suppose that’s
all right except that I think we still need at least some diplomats in regular
contact with the public to be able to perform their jobs adequately. These include political, economic and public
diplomacy officers for starters.
After all, I can sit at my computer here in New Mexico, read
British newspapers, watch the BBC and scan British blogs online – and for that
matter converse with people I know in London by phone or Skype if I – and they –
so choose. But there’s still the matter
of the last three feet needed to cement relationships, gain trust, put events
in context and trade information. The more any Embassy is isolated from the people the diplomats need to contact, the less
likely contact will be. It’s
just human nature. This is to no one’s
benefit.
Fortress Embassies in a networked world don't compute
So here’s the dilemma:
maybe it’s not a winning or losing fortress embassy design that’s the
major problem. Maybe its more
fundamental than that. In my view, the US
government needs to rethink and reconceptualize its physical presence abroad. This is, after all, a networked world with
various nodes and nodules located in numerous places.
It is highly unlikely that a fortress or non-fortress embassy will ever adequately fit
all US government personnel into a single building despite a heads-in-the-sand
Congressional law to the contrary: Over
27 years as a US public diplomacy diplomat, I never once worked in a permanently
“right sized” building – staffs expand and shrink like accordions. Besides,
the last place I wanted to be was behind Embassy walls.
Perhaps it would be more prudent
then for some American Embassy personnel to work in smaller, scattered and less visible office suites located in a variety of publicly accessible locations. Think about it, this new approach could even be marketed as savvy 21st century diplomatic camouflage. Otherwise, why not just keep America's diplomats at home in
Foggy Bottom? That would be far cheaper.