See Designs for New U.S. Embassies by America's Top Architects
U.S. Embassy Compound | London
KieranTimberlake
With plans to transform the current Eero Saarinen–designed U.S. Embassy (1960) into a hotel by David Chipperfield, a new facility in London’s Nine Elms district is nearing completion. The 550,000-square-foot cube—which holds offices, ceremonial spaces, residences, and support facilities—sits at the center of a five-acre site at the edge of the River Thames and is surrounded by a public park. A range of features here, such as a large pond and garden walls with bench seating, form integrated barriers, helping to meet stringent security requirements. Sitting atop a two-story colonnade, the steel-frame building employs an envelope of extruded aluminum and glass, which is screened with ETFE to mitigate solar heat gain and glare. Aiming for LEED Platinum and BREEAM certifications, the building is scheduled to open this summer.
Image courtesy KieranTimberlake / Studio AMD
U.S. Embassy Compound | Mexico City
Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Davis Brody Bond
Construction will soon begin on the embassy’s 15-acre site in Mexico City’s Nuevo Polanco neighborhood, a rapidly developing area with residential, government, and cultural buildings. Once completed in 2021, the new premises—a complex of low-slung rectilinear buildings—will replace the current outdated base at nearby Paseo de la Reforma, becoming one of the largest U.S. embassies ever constructed. With a nod to the materials and architectural traditions of Mexico, the exterior will be clad in sandstone. Muntz metal shading devices adorn the facades, reducing energy use and giving scale to the monumental compound. On the top floor, small interior courtyards open up into a larger central courtyard that is covered by a canopy with two large openings, bringing light and air into the facility while promoting a sense of community among staff. Sunken gardens surrounding the buildings incorporate native plant species and offer tranquil gathering areas. The project is targeting LEED Silver certification.
Image courtesy March / Tod Williams Bille Tsien / Davis Brody Bond JV
U.S. Embassy Compound | Mexico City
Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Davis Brody Bond
Construction will soon begin on the embassy’s 15-acre site in Mexico City’s Nuevo Polanco neighborhood, a rapidly developing area with residential, government, and cultural buildings. Once completed in 2021, the new premises—a complex of low-slung rectilinear buildings—will replace the current outdated base at nearby Paseo de la Reforma, becoming one of the largest U.S. embassies ever constructed. With a nod to the materials and architectural traditions of Mexico, the exterior will be clad in sandstone. Muntz metal shading devices adorn the facades, reducing energy use and giving scale to the monumental compound. On the top floor, small interior courtyards open up into a larger central courtyard that is covered by a canopy with two large openings, bringing light and air into the facility while promoting a sense of community among staff. Sunken gardens surrounding the buildings incorporate native plant species and offer tranquil gathering areas. The project is targeting LEED Silver certification.
Image courtesy March / Tod Williams Bille Tsien / Davis Brody Bond JV
U.S. Embassy Compound and Housing | Beirut, Lebanon
Morphosis
Described by the architects as a small city, the 1 million-square-foot Beirut complex will include a hotel, offices, residences for Marines, and a host of support services for the 800 people living and working here each day. The compound, a series of interconnected cast-in-place concrete volumes, is being built adjacent to the current facility in the suburb of Awkar, the second time that the U.S. Embassy has moved since it was bombed in 1983. In response to the site’s sloping topography, the buildings take the form of sinuous ribbons that undulate along the rises and dips in the landscape. A curvaceous chancery building, which is expected to achieve LEED Platinum certification, is situated at the property’s highest point, serving as a beacon to the complex. The project is slated for completion in 2022.
Image courtesy Morphosis
U.S. Embassy Compound and Housing | Beirut, Lebanon
Morphosis
Described by the architects as a small city, the 1 million-square-foot Beirut complex will include a hotel, offices, residences for Marines, and a host of support services for the 800 people living and working here each day. The compound, a series of interconnected cast-in-place concrete volumes, is being built adjacent to the current facility in the suburb of Awkar, the second time that the U.S. Embassy has moved since it was bombed in 1983. In response to the site’s sloping topography, the buildings take the form of sinuous ribbons that undulate along the rises and dips in the landscape. A curvaceous chancery building, which is expected to achieve LEED Platinum certification, is situated at the property’s highest point, serving as a beacon to the complex. The project is slated for completion in 2022.
Image courtesy Morphosis
U.S. Embassy Compound and Housing | Ankara, Turkey
Richard Olcott/Ennead Architects
The new Ankara embassy, scheduled for completion in 2020, will be located among the skyscrapers and shopping malls of the still-developing central business district of Sögütözü. A modern interpretation of traditional Turkish courtyard architecture, the 400,000-square-foot compound is defined by a series of walled gardens that offer secure outdoor spaces and define paths of circulation around the site. The chancery itself reflects the region’s rich material palette with its stone-clad facade and stone window screens. Three courtyards within the building create gathering areas in the temperate climate while supplying daylight to interiors. In response to the deforestation resulting from Ankara’s development, gardens will be lushly planted with native landscaping.
Image courtesy Ennead Architects
U.S. Embassy Compound | Jakarta, Indonesia
Davis Brody Bond
On the U.S. Embassy’s prominent site in Jarkata’s Merdeka Square, where many of the capital city’s civic buildings and monuments converge, a new complex is rising, phasing out the collection of ad hoc structures that the embassy has occupied since shortly after World War II. The campus will include offices, public spaces, and housing for Marine guards, and is to be anchored by a 10-story, 330,000-square-foot glass chancery building. Surfaced with a system of perforated-metal louvers, the chancery’s woven-looking facade responds to the site’s equatorial position while alluding to local textiles. Due to the monsoon climate and the prevalence of groundwater pumping, the buildings are designed so that rainwater, wastewater, and condensate from chillers can be treated and used. The first phase of the project is scheduled for completion next year.
Image courtesy Davis Brody Bond
U.S. Embassy Compound | Jakarta, Indonesia
Davis Brody Bond
On the U.S. Embassy’s prominent site in Jarkata’s Merdeka Square, where many of the capital city’s civic buildings and monuments converge, a new complex is rising, phasing out the collection of ad hoc structures that the embassy has occupied since shortly after World War II. The campus will include offices, public spaces, and housing for Marine guards, and is to be anchored by a 10-story, 330,000-square-foot glass chancery building. Surfaced with a system of perforated-metal louvers, the chancery’s woven-looking facade responds to the site’s equatorial position while alluding to local textiles. Due to the monsoon climate and the prevalence of groundwater pumping, the buildings are designed so that rainwater, wastewater, and condensate from chillers can be treated and used. The first phase of the project is scheduled for completion next year.
Image courtesy Davis Brody Bond
U.S. Consulate General Compound | Matamoros, Mexico
Richärd+Bauer
The design for the eight-acre campus’s main chancery building responds to its location at the edge of Olympic Cultural Park, a major civic space in this border city less than a mile from the Rio Grande. The 65,000-square- foot volume opens directly out to the park and its amphitheater, museum, and public artworks as a gesture to the community, while its coral stone veneer relates to local stonework. Embracing traditional responses to the hot climate, the chancery employs a Teflon latilla that sits atop the structure; its fabric is woven onto a white-steel frame that extends from the atrium to serve as a canopy for outdoor circulation, most prominently at the main entrance, which faces the central thoroughfare for traffic coming in and out of the country. The complex, which also includes residential quarters for Marines, a warehouse, support buildings, and a series of entry pavilions, is currently under construction, with completion expected in 2019. It is designed to be LEED Silver–certified.
Image courtesy Richärd + Bauer
U.S. Consulate General Compound | Dharan, Saudi Arabia
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
The U.S. Consulate Complex’s new site, at the boundary of the oil-rich city of Dhahran and the denser coastal city of Al Kohbar, will allow it to have a greater presence, in a location more central than its current, more inland one. The compound’s massing and organization echo those of nearby towns with a tight clustering of structures separated by courtyards and narrow streets. The campus also makes use of numerous energy-saving features, including an array of 13 wind towers atop the community center that will capture prevailing winds, to deliver conditioned air throughout the facility. Vernacular architectural elements, such as shading screens, are reinterpreted and reengineered to create a synthesis of American innovation and technology with Saudi design and culture. The consulate is expected to reach completion in 2020.
Image courtesy SOM
U.S. Embassy Compound | Maputo, Mozambique
YGH with Allied Works
The new 10-acre Mozambique embassy campus—scheduled for completion in 2020—sits along the capital city’s rapidly developing coastal zone, overlooking the Indian Ocean. The compound includes offices, support services, residences, and recreational space. The site’s boardformed- concrete perimeter walls—inspired by a rich local heritage of midcentury concrete structures—unify the campus’s edifices. Its three interconnected glass-and-metal office buildings employ ultra-high-performance concrete screens, which minimize heat gain and glare while framing views to the city and ocean. Entry pavilions flank the central volume, and other structures on either side of the site further define and buffer major open spaces. The surrounding landscape will feature native plantings modulating from an oceanfront dune environment to a lush forest at the site’s interior.
Image courtesy YGH with Allied Works
In the mid-20th century, after the United States emerged triumphantly from World War II, the State Department launched an ambitious architecture program for new U.S. embassies that expressed the nation’s forward-looking role on the world stage. Leading American architects were tapped for these commissions, including Eero Saarinen, who designed the chancery on Grosvenor Square in London; Edward Durell Stone, who created what may be his finest work in New Delhi; and Richard Neutra, who built the embassy in Karachi, Pakistan. Other architects in the program included Walter Gropius (Athens), John Johansen (Dublin), Marcel Breuer (the Hague) and Jose Luis Sert, whose elegant mission in Baghdad was decommissioned; a new embassy complex was eventually built in 2007—a massive $750 million fortified compound on 104 acres designed by the Kansas City firm Berger Devine Yaeger. It is the largest embassy in the world.
As the century wore on, State Department buildings were often more utilitarian than innovative, and security concerns became paramount. The attacks on U.S. properties abroad, particularly the simultaneous 1998 suicide truck bombings of the embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, which killed more than 200 people, had demonstrated the new dangers of diplomacy. After 9/11, security demands became even more urgent.
But in 2010, a new State Department initiative, Excellence in Diplomatic Facilities, sought to bring superior design once more to America’s global outposts, without compromising safety. That year, KieranTimberlake won the much-publicized competition to replace Saarinen’s outmoded embassy with a new one elsewhere in London. The design incorporates sustainability and security measures without turning the complex into a walled fortress. Scheduled to open this summer, the embassy employs a moatlike feature (as part of a landscape designed by OLIN) among elements to thwart attacks.
Casey Jones, who had led the Design Excellence Program at the General Services Administration (GSA), moved to the State Department as Deputy Director of the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO). In helping supervise the program, he engaged contemporary American architects such as Morphosis, Tod Williams Billie Tsien, and Ennead to design new embassies and consulates. Though both Jones and Lydia Muniz, director of the OBO, left the State Department in January during the transition to the new administration, the legacy of design excellence remains for now. What follows are many of the current designs, which have been approved and are in the process of implementation. Such projects, as Muniz said in a Congressional hearing, “are symbols of American culture and values.” We hope that they inspire the State Department to continue to seek the best in architecture when building for the future.
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