Archinect - News

Morphosis breaks ground on new U.S. Embassy compound in Saudi Arabia

2023-12-26T11:41:00-05:00

Morphosis has broken ground on the firm’s new U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia compound project for Riyadh’s Diplomatic Quarter.

Located on a 27.5-acre site away from the capital’s center near the Hanifa River, the complex will be delivered at an unknown square footage in replacement of the embassy’s current facility from 1984.

In a recent Instagram post, the firm states: “This natural setting provided a key source of inspiration for the campus: we drew from the wadi's geometries to shape the campus planning and buildings throughout the site, guiding circulation and channeling breezes between the structures. The new Embassy design embodies an innovative approach to providing safe, functional, and sustainable facilities for the US diplomatic mission to Saudi Arabia.”

Image courtesy U.S. Embassy and Consulates in Saudi Arabia

According to the project team, the design prioritizes security throughout while integrating the most state-of-the-art and modern hospitality features with sensitivit...

The Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations announces selected firms for worldwide architectural and engineering support services

2021-08-02T17:33:00-04:00

The Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO), responsible for providing facilities abroad for the United States Department of State and the U.S government, at large, has selected 12 Architectural and Engineering (A/E) firms for the Worldwide Architectural and Engineering Support Services Indefinite Delivery / Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) from a shortlist of 25.

As detailed by the U.S. Department of State, the firms will provide program-level process and procedure-improvement support and conduct surveys and analyses for existing facilities. They will also assist with master plans, security mitigation studies, site expansion studies, project phasing analysis, and historic structures survey.

The selected firms are:

AECOM Services, Inc.
Buro Happold Engineering
Davis Brody Bond
Arthur Gensler, Jr. & Associates, Inc. (dba Gensler)
HDR KCCT JV
Jacobs Government Services Company
Lake Flato Architects
The Mason & Hanger Group, Inc.
Moore Ruble Yudell Architects & Planners
ODA-Architecture, P.C...

The U.S. Embassy in London receives a 2020 Award of Excellence from Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat

2021-01-21T17:19:00-05:00

The U.S. Embassy in London, designed by Philadelphia-based KieranTimberlake has been awarded a 2020 Award of Excellence by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) in the Best Tall Building Under 100 Meters category.

Previously on Archinect: Rachel Whiteread brings American Suburbia to London. Photo by Mike Bruce.

According to the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Overseas Building Operations (OBO), the building incorporates a number of suitable features including daylight-responsive lighting and shade controls, passive and active chilled beams, efficient mechanical systems, and combined heat and power generation. Photovoltaics and ground source heat pumps provide a means of renewable energy for the structure.

The building opened in December of 2017.

US Embassy in Jerusalem will cost at least $20M more than Trump's $250,000 bargain estimate

2018-07-19T15:39:00-04:00

President Donald Trump boasted earlier this year that the US would spend only $200,000 to $300,000 on a new US Embassy in Jerusalem, but it seems the project will cost nearly $20 million more than that estimate. [...] The US spent just under $400,000 on modifications to the consular facility that allowed it to open as the US Embassy in May, but the State Department told CNN at the time that it planned "for construction of a new extension [...] as well as for additional security enhancements"

Back in March, the 'Builder in Chief' promised that the highly controversial new United States Embassy in Jerusalem would have to be built "very quickly and very inexpensively" at a bargain price tag of around $250,000. According to documents made public this month, the State Department however recently awarded a $21.2 million contract to the firm Desbuild Limak D&K to design and build an extension and compound security upgrades to the former consular building in Jerusalem's Arnona neighborhood—nearly 100 times the original estimate.

Rachel Whiteread brings American Suburbia to London

2018-01-16T13:06:00-05:00

A major new public art work by Rachel Whiteread modelled on a suburban US house will be unveiled next week at the new US Embassy in Nine Elms, south London. The wall sculpture, titled US Embassy (Flat pack house; 2013-1015), will greet embassy visitors as they enter into the lobby through the consular court. The work was commissioned by Art in Embassies, a US governmental body.

Artist Rachel Whiteread's name has become synonymous with the production of architectural interventions, invention and material playfulness through her large-scale artist sculptures, specifically her casts of the interiors of buildings. Her newest addition, installed in the US Embassy titled, US Embassy (Flat pack house; 2013-1015) in London is no exception.

The large-scale sculpture will be on display at the US Embassy in London and consists of a collection of concrete interior casts of a traditional American suburban home, interiors of a traditional mid-century suburban home from America. Each nuance, crack, crevice and plethora of formal elements are frozen in time within the casts and subsequently hung vertically on embassy walls.

"Calm and reasonable and a bit boring": Rowan Moore reviews London's new U.S. embassy

2018-01-12T19:36:00-05:00

London’s new US embassy may be just a glass cube with disguised fortifications, but it is also restrained, efficient, green… the antithesis of Donald Trump [...] It’s a fortress, of course it is. As the embassy of the Great Satan to the Little Satan – as the unlamented Ayatollah Khomeini would have put it – it couldn’t not be a target and defended accordingly. The architects therefore decided to make it as nice a fortress as possible [...].

The new embassy in Battersea Nine Elms seen from across the river Thames. Image via Wikipedia.

Only a few more days until the U.S. Embassy & Consulates in the United Kingdom move into the new digs (designed by KieranTimberlake) in Nine Elms on January 16. Sans Trump.

The new billion-dollar U.S. embassy in London doesn't want to look like a fortress

2017-12-14T14:26:00-05:00

At $1 billion, it is the most expensive embassy ever constructed. But its designers say the new American chancery on the Thames River marks a paradigm shift: The U.S. Embassy here will exude openness while hiding all the clever ways it defends itself from attack. After decades of building American embassies that look brutalist or bland, like obvious fortresses, the soon-to-be-opened chancery in London is a crystalline cube, plopped down in the middle of a public park, without visible walls.

Image via the U.S. Embassy in London's Twitter

The KieranTimberlake-designed U.S. Embassy in London is preparing for its grand opening on January 16, and the building pleasantly departs from the increasingly common drab 'fortress' chic that American chanceries in cities with heightened risk of terror attacks have adopted.

Image via the U.S. Embassy in London's Twitter

Pulling off a seemingly transparent and welcoming look while still employing state-of-the-art defensive strategies and gadgetry (it even has a pseudo-moat) isn't cheap though — the crystalline 'sugar cube' comes with a hefty $1-billion price tag and takes the title of the most expensive embassy ever built.

Morphosis Architects' U.S. Beirut Embassy should be finished by 2023

2017-01-24T13:39:00-05:00

After winning the competition to design the U.S. Embassy in Beirut several years ago, Morphosis Architects has had some additional good news from the State Department: a construction contract has officially been awarded for the project, which sets the timetable for completion a little over six years from now. As the official word from the unmolested Department of State website notes:

"The Department of State awarded the construction contract for the new U.S. Embassy complex in Beirut, Lebanon to B.L. Harbert of Birmingham, Alabama.

The multi-building complex will be situated on a 43-acre site in Awkar, near the current U.S. Embassy Compound. The new complex will include a Chancery, a Marine Security Guard Residence, representational and staff housing, facilities for the community and associated support facilities. The project is expected to be ready for occupancy in 2023."

Studio Gang Architects selected to design new U.S. Embassy in Brazil

2016-03-09T12:55:00-05:00

Out of a shortlist of six firms, The Department of State's Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations has chosen Studio Gang Architects, run by MacArthur fellow and winner of 2016's Architect of the Year from the Women in Architecture Awards, Jeanne Gang, to design a multi-building campus for the new U.S. Embassy based in Brasilia, Brazil. Studio Gang Architects, which has tackled such easy breezy projects in the past as a proposal to reverse the flow of the Chicago River, was chosen in part for its "more than 20 years of collaborative experience executing projects with complex constraints at challenging sites," according to a press release. The new embassy, which will rebuild the existing compound on its 12 acre site, will feature a Marine Security Guard Residence, a Chancery, and various support facilities.

For more on what the Gang has been up to:

Debated relocation of U.S. Embassy in London is "inevitably painful" for locals

2015-06-10T15:58:00-04:00

The United States Embassy in Grosvenor Square, a Modernist concrete building in the heart of Mayfair, London’s most exclusive neighborhood, has been a potential terrorist target for years, creating anxiety for both employees and neighbors...So a new embassy [by KieranTimberlake] is under construction for a move by 2017, and the residents of Mayfair are relieved. But this being Britain, the new embassy has become the object of debate and, in some quarters, ridicule.

KieranTimberlake’s U.S. Embassy in London celebrates groundbreaking

New U.S. Embassy in The Hague, Netherlands breaks ground

2014-05-30T13:49:00-04:00

Over in The Hague in The Netherlands, the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) celebrated the groundbreaking of the new U.S. Embassy earlier this week. Located on a 10-acre site in the Wassenaar municipality, some features of the $206 million project will include a chancery office building, a U.S. Marine Corps residence, a utility building, and multiple access pavilions.

Moore Ruble Yudell Architects & Planners of Santa Monica, CA will be project architect with Caddell Construction Company of Montgomery, AL for construction.

Find more about the project on Bustler.

Department of State and Finnish officials dedicate renovated U.S. Embassy in Helsinki

2014-04-30T20:35:00-04:00

U.S. Department of State, OBO, and local Finnish officials hosted the dedication ceremony for the new campus of the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki, Finland today. Located in the same 3-acre site since the 1930s in the Kaivopuisto District in downtown Helsinki, the $114 million project had Moore Ruble Yudell of Santa Monica, CA as design architect; PAGE of Arlington, VA as architect of record; and BL Harbert International LLC from Birmingham for construction.

Started in November 2011, the three-phase project consisted of renovating existing spaces and adding new facilities to enrich the campus. The transformation of the existing office annex into the new Innovation Center finished in January 2013 while completion of the new chancery in phase two happened this past February. If all continues to go well, the existing chancery and ambassador's residence will be renovated by this December.

Finnish cultural references in the new Embassy's aesthetics include the permanent art collection and the ne...