america goes south

The US is relocating its London embassy from Mayfair to Vauxhall (the misleadingly named Nine Elms, to be precise). You can choose whether to interpret this as implicit acknowledgement of imperial decline, as a sign of straitened times, or as canny property management. Or none of the above: the embassy claim it's so that they can be close to Vauxhall station. It's good for buses too (after all, who wants to pay that pesky congestion charge?).

The State Department is touchingly proud of the proposed design, rendered above. The rationale for it is very Age of Obama:

In recent years, the government has relied on standard embassy designs as it worked to rapidly replace or upgrade overseas facilities in the nervous post-2001 environment. Many of those were criticized for being fortress-like, forbidding and isolated from their surroundings and the people they serve. The choice of the KieranTimberlake design suggests that the more open process has yielded exactly what the State Department's Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations was looking for: "a modern, open and secure" building that was sensitive to London's architectural context.

For those of you unfamiliar with Vauxhall, said context is mainly spectacularly ugly glass-and-metal boxes and grim housing estates. So, perfect. You can't say the architects aren't sensitive to Britain's wider cultural context either. The new embassy will have a moat:

A semi-circular pond will function as a protective moat along the Thames side, while a spiraling landscape to the south sets the building away from potential car or truck bombs. A complex envelope of blast-resistant glass and a polymer skin (known as ETFE) will provide both security and energy efficiency, while shading the building on its sun-exposed sides.

Perhaps they can be persuaded to add a bombproof duckhouse and gun turret.

Comments

[peter]

Based on experiences in Grosvener Square, two important questions which I trust the architects have considered:

- Will demonstrators against US foreign policy have room to assemble out front?

- Will applicants for US visas still have to queue in the rain out back?

[Elemjay]

That picture looks like the backside of the building is on fire.

The Grosvenor Sq site does enough damage to traffic flow - hate to think what is going to happen to the toxic Vauxhall one way system with this in situ...