Though most of the American public is no doubt unaware of the change, the inhabitants of London, The Hague, and Oslo—to name cities in just three countries concerned—cannot have failed to notice a major shift in U.S. foreign policy. Since the early 2010s, as conservation architect Jorge Otero-Pailos explained in his 2014 essay, “Public Architecture After America’s Withdrawal: On the Preservation of U.S. Embassies,” the federal government has been “quietly selling off” its valuable city-center chanceries—many of them fine examples of postwar Modernism—“to the highest bidder, and using the money to build new, larger, and more heavily protected structures” in outer locations. With this post-9/11 security imperative in mind, the U.S. embassy in Britain has been moved from Mayfair to Nine Elms, that in the Netherlands from The Hague to the neighboring town of Wassenaar, and Norway’s from Henrik Ibsens Gate, opposite the royal palace, to the suburb of Makrellbekken. After the sell-off, there remains the question of what happens to these decommissioned edifices, “a fate that varies a lot depending on the host country—some are simply demolished, others preserved to a greater or lesser degree,” says Otero-Pailos, whose expertise saw him join the team of architects that last December completed the conversion of the Oslo chancery into a mixed-use complex for property-developer Fredensborg.