Esteemed architecture critic Warren Ellis on the new US Embassy in London

I think perhaps this building says a little more than it was intended to. In fact, let’s admit it. IT’S A FORTRESS WITH A FUCKING MOAT. It doesn’t say "welcome to a little piece of America, one of the best ideas the world ever had and a country that welcomes the tired and poor and afraid." It says "if you even look at us funny we’ll pour boiling oil on you from the roof. Raise the drawbridge! Release the Mongolian Terror Trout!"

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Comments

[The Necromancer]

Hmm...This seems to be continuing a trend. The US embassy in Canada (located in Ottawa) was built a few years ago, and looks like an ironclad warship. Think USS Monitor, but with jailhouse windows...

[Ahistoricality]

a 12-storey cube clad in a blastproof glass and plastic façade

That alone should have disqualified the design. This isn't architecture; it's milspec engineering.

[John S. Wilkins]

I think that we need embassies with firing slits around the top. And actual artillery.

[Adam Roberts]

As a Londoner, I can say that the stretch of south bank they're going to build on doesn't look anything like the background to that artist's impression: it's all low-rise grime, warehouses and run-down roads. Google maps gives a sense of it.

[Adam Roberts]

Maybe the idea is: 'build an embassy, and corporate glass skyscrapers will flock about it'. Not sure I see the logic in that, myself. But what do I know?

[Bob Reed]

Well, I'm more a fan of neo-classical architecture, especially for public buildings, so I'm biased against the whole glass-cube, bauhaus-esque design a priori-regardless of the efficiency of "form following function". I can't imagine who decided in favor of blowing a billion dollars on a facility this ugly. I blame Bush...

I'm glad that for once my subjective opinion is in agreement with a respected critic, I'm feeling more "artsy" already!

[Martin Shellabarger]

I was thinking it was more along the lines of the "Borg Cube" from StarTrek. . .