Archinect - News

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.

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.

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

2013-11-13T20:35:00-05:00

The U.S. Department of State - Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations announced the groundbreaking of the KieranTimberlake-designed U.S. Embassy in London on Nov. 13. KieranTimberlake of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was named as the project architect after winning the Department of State competition back in 2010.

To see previous news posts about the U.S. Embassy in London project, click here.

All the glamour of a corporate office block

2010-02-24T12:55:00-05:00

So says Nicolai Ouroussoff in his review of the recently released winning design, by the Philadelphia firm KieranTimberlake, for the State Department’s new embassy in London. NYT Previously

Christopher Hawthorne reviews the new US Embassy in London

2010-02-23T15:27:00-05:00

Even as the design itself, for all its airiness and crisp confidence, is hardly radical from a formal point of view -- it consists of a cube sheathed in a shimmering polymer scrim and resting on a ground-floor colonnade of concrete pillars -- it represents a major shift in how we think about the role of U.S. government architecture, both at home and abroad. It suggests putting an emphasis on action instead of values, measurable behavior rather than symbolic gestures.

The LA Times' Christopher Hawthorne reviews the new U.S. Embassy in London, designed by KieranTimberlake.

New London Embassy

2009-03-11T12:15:00-04:00

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) announced that four architectural firms have been selected for the final phase of the design competition for the new United States Embassy in London. State Department

US Embassy London Shortlist

2009-01-06T00:21:00-05:00

Thomas Mayne's Morphosis Architects, SOM, KPF and Richard Meier & Partners are among nine firms on the all-American shortlist to design Britain’s £275 million new US embassy. BD | previously | related