New, Unbunkered American Embassy Will Rise in London
Philadelphia-based architects Kieran Timberlake have won the competition to build a new US Embassy in London, with a design that concentrates on environmental issues, Louis Susman, US ambassador to London, announced on Tuesday.
The victorious design, to be built in Nine Elms on the southern bank of the Thames, combines energy efficiency with improvements to the post-industrial landscape of one of London’s last big undeveloped city-centre sites.
It consists of a glass cube sheathed in a stretched, sculptural membrane embedded with gossamer-fine photovoltaic cells. This crystalline second skin both shades the interior from the sun and converts the sun’s rays into power in one of the multiple measures to make this an exemplary green building.
The glazed box sits atop a colonnade intended to create a feeling of civic engagement and openness which has been pointedly lacking in recent US embassies and which became one of the reasons that the state department took the decision to vacate its existing building in central London’s Grosvenor Square.
Amid the residential setting of Mayfair the concrete blockades and the huge architecture of security had seemed hugely intrusive, a reflection of national fear rather than pride. [Read rest of story]