American Embassies Undergo Increased Design Scrutiny

[M II A II R II K]

Designing buildings for America’s diplomats is getting ever trickier


Jul 30th 2011



Read More: http://www.economist.com/node/215249...rstdigyourmoat

“NOBODY can be messing with our embassy,” declared Barack Obama in mid-July, after a pro-government mob pelted America’s mission in Damascus with stones, eggs and tomatoes. That is not true, however, of the put-upon architects who have to design America’s embassies: they are constantly being hit with new restrictions, from both their own government and the host country.

- Safety rules have been tightened repeatedly, and incorporated into a “standard embassy design” that dictates which offices should be adjacent to which (keep the bigwigs away from the public areas), how far embassy buildings should be set back from nearby roads (100 feet, or 30 metres), what materials can be used for walls and windows (nothing that is easy to climb or shatter) and so on. The result, critics say, is a dull series of near-identical, boxy bunkers. As John Kerry, who heads the Senate foreign-relations committee, put it in 2009, “We are building some of the ugliest embassies I’ve ever seen…I cringe when I see what we’re doing.”

- Londoners are less than thrilled by the thought of the “crystalline cube” that will slowly rise from the semi-gentrified riverine site of Nine Elms. This, at $1 billion the most expensive American embassy ever built, was made necessary when Grosvenor Square in Mayfair became too unsafe, despite the bomb-blast barriers that make the place look like a damper version of Baghdad. The new embassy will be separated from malicious sightseers by rolling parkland and a moat—100 feet wide, as required.

- The State Department insists on fixed prices and completion dates, with predetermined penalties for overruns. Yet conditions in the host country can be unpredictable to say the least. Page Southerland Page has had half a dozen projects interrupted by civil wars or terrorist scares. Even in places at peace, the obstacles can be hard to foresee: a dead tree on the site in Phnom Penh turned out to be revered by locals, forcing the design to be changed to preserve it; in Kigali, excavations for the foundations unearthed human remains.....

[JManc]

If we're that paranoid about security, why don't we build our embassies outside of town and away from the restless natives where there's plenty of land rather than build hideous fortresses in the middle of the city.

[RLS_rls]

^They're purposely built in a central area close to the heart of the city, close to the action. But that's not a bad idea you have, it'd certainly open up a lot of possibilities.

[UrbanImpressionist]

There's some good one's I'm sure, but walking down the main drag in Seoul, I was thoroughly embarrassed at how ugly our South Korea embassy is:


http://img.yonhapnews.co.kr/Basic/Article/EN/20100819/20100819170555_bodyfile.jpg

Could there be anything worse!?

[Millennium2002]

The only reason why that'd still be there is because they haven't moved out yet since the Korean War.

In a few years however they'll probably build a completely new one somewhere else with the enhanced security features.

[MolsonExport]

They are not embassies. They are military compounds that happen to have some diplomats. Can you imagine if they were building the Capitol from scratch today? 50-foot thick walls of concrete, behind a 1000 foot moat, ...