Architexturez. wrote:
Embassy in a Box
U.S. diplomatic architecture is increasingly dull.
And the Brits too..
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,1234554,00.html
Our place in Kampala
With a number of new embassies in the works, the Foreign Office has
become one of the UK's biggest commissioners of new buildings. How can
architecture sell Britain's image abroad - and keep out the truck bombs
too? By Steve Rose
Wednesday June 9, 2004
The Guardian
Safety first: Tony Fretton's design for the British embassy in Warsaw
As architectural statements go, the Foreign Office on Whitehall must be
one of the most brazenly self-confident buildings ever constructed. Its
19th-century bulk is festooned inside and out with symbols of imperial
superiority: marble shipped in from far-flung dominions; sculptures,
carvings and murals representing Britain's possessions, heroes and
virtues; allegorical paintings with titles such as The East Offering Its
Riches to Britannia. This sumptuous palace, designed by George Gilbert
Scott, was once the throbbing heart of empire, from which British power
spread to outposts in virtually every country on the map. Today, though,
the flow has been reversed. Where Britain's overseas embassies were once
the application points of national might, they are now starting to look
like exposed extremities, and direct channels back to a sensitive homeland.
Embassies have always been vulnerable buildings, but now they are in the
firing line more than ever. Al-Qaida's first significant strikes against
the US were on its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in 1998, killing
more than 200 people. Since then, British embassies in Iran, Yemen and
Istanbul, Turkey, have also been attacked, the latter incident claiming
10 staff last November. With about 4,000 properties to administer in 230
countries, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has been presented
with a serious security headache.
At the same time, Britain has been attempting to rebrand itself through
its embassies. Having realised that much of the world still associates
the UK with Beefeaters outside the Tower of London, the FCO is keen to
communicate an image of Britain as a modern, dynamic, bridge-building
nation. From a diplomacy point of view, the ideal embassy building is a
marquee with a sign outside saying, "Do come in and have a cup of tea."
From a security aspect, the ideal structure is an underground bunker
accessible only by a well-guarded trapdoor. Added to which, it has to be
something "British".
"I think the world has changed from three or four years ago, when we
felt we weren't under the same pressure," says Julian Metcalfe of the
Foreign Office. "It remains a desire that we should use our diplomatic
buildings to project the right image of the UK, but reality needs to
dictate priority and naturally security is a key driver. That, I think,
is a challenge we have to address."
Metcalfe leads the Estate Strategy Unit, which is responsible for the
FCO's international building stock and, in contrast to Whitehall's
grandeur, operates out of a concrete office tower in Croydon. Since the
Istanbul attack, the department has no shortage of projects on which to
spend its annual £50m budget. Many buildings are simply too old to cope
with security demands; some have shut down completely - the British
embassy in Algeria now operates from the Hilton. Many others have been
patched up with ungainly temporary measures: concrete barricades,
checkpoints, roadblocks, even a small tank outside the Madrid embassy -
clearly not the 21st-century image the government had in mind.
The US's response to the new security climate has effectively been to
batten down the hatches. In high-risk countries, US embassies are being
moved out of city centres and rebuilt to fortress specifications, using
imported building materials, blast-proof structures and limited amounts
of glass. The FCO is striving to avoid such extreme measures, says
Metcalfe. "We want to continue to be seen to be reasonably accessible to
our customers. We have had to revisit our priorities on security
grounds, but we have not embarked on a programme of building bunkers all
over the world."
So how to resolve the marquee vs bunker dilemma? Judging by the FCO's
slate of projects, the first step has been to treat security as a key
design factor that must be integrated into embassy architecture from the
start. The second step has been to pick thrusting young architects
rather than established names, as it has in the past. The FCO now prides
itself on being a good client for architects. The Architects' Journal
ranked it 14th in its top 50 British clients last year (up from 26 the
year before), saying: "This is the only central government department
with a reputation for decent, even great architecture."
A contributing factor was the nomination of Tony Fretton to design the
new Warsaw embassy last year. Fretton, 55, is hardly a teenager, but
works such as the Camden Arts Centre in London and his Faith House in
Dorset have earned him a reputation for understated refinement and
sensitivity to surroundings. Between Warsaw's neoclassical stucco
buildings, his scheme inserts a sleek, minimal box of glass and bronze,
with a generous open-plan interior. It is a promising-looking design,
but since the Istanbul attacks, Fretton has had to "reconsider"the
security aspects, which could affect the aesthetics. Furthermore, it has
been deferred for a year to make way for more urgent projects.
Two new embassies, in San'a, Yemen, and Kampala, Uganda, are due to be
completed sooner, and although their contexts are totally different,
they also illustrate the FCO's intentions. Winchester-based architects
Design Engine were surprised to win the San'a commission. "Our company
has only been around for three years, so we were quite excited just to
get on to the shortlist," says director Richard Jobson. The Kampala
project went to London practice Cullum and Nightingale, which had
already delivered a smart new High Commission in Nairobi (in
Commonwealth countries, British embassies are called high commissions).
Unlike in Warsaw, these new embassies sit on relatively large suburban
sites, which means they can employ the simplest and most effective
security device: the standoff - placing the building well away from the
perimeter so it is more difficult to reach with a truck-full of
explosives. The San'a embassy needed replacing for exactly this reason.
A bomb was thrown over its wall four years ago, and an al-Qaida plot to
drive a truck bomb into it was foiled last year. Design Engine's
proposal cuts away a corner of the perimeter wall, making a quarter of
the site into an open, public approach to the building. Open in
perception, that is, rather than reality: a low concrete barrier will
still stop truck bombers, and the cut-away corner enhances surveillance
visibility.
Cullum and Nightingales' Kampala High Commission is a larger building,
but it, too, sits back from the road in the middle of the site. Fronted
by a welcoming entrance canopy, the buildings are grouped to create a
secure central courtyard, like a cloister. Security and architecture did
not initially go hand in hand here. Richard Nightingale cites a design
of open clay grilles they had been developing for the upper floors of
the inner courtyard, which would have allowed for natural ventilation.
"We went to great lengths, and the FCO's bomb people actually approved
them. Then very late in the day they decided it was not acceptable,
because of the risk of devices being inserted. Now it's floor-to-ceiling
windows, which is a shame because we wanted it to be as open as possible."
Overall, though, both architects praise the FCO's commitment to good
architecture as well as good security. "That was my biggest worry," says
Jobson, "but the two sides seem to be quite well meshed. They're
prepared to revisit first principles and try to understand what we're
aiming to achieve from an architecture perspective."
That still leaves the question of Britishness. Is there anything
particularly British about these new embassies? Both Cullum and
Nightingale and Design Engine sought to incorporate local materials and
techniques into their essentially European designs; Nightingale had
already proved this could work in Nairobi, where Kenyan stonemasonry
skills were put to good use on the building's hand-chiselled exterior
cladding. In Kampala it was the crude homemade bricks, usually
associated with poorer homes, that caught Nightingale's attention, plus
small details such as banana leaves imprinted into concrete ceilings. In
Yemen, Design Engine borrowed from the Arabian paradise garden concept
for their landscaping, dividing the site into four quadrants in
accordance with Islamic cosmology.
Perhaps this desire to assimilate and integrate, rather than strive
towards some sort of architectural chauvinism, is where the true
Britishness of these buildings lies. "The British are the greatest
magpies in the world," Jobson agrees. "They take everything from
everywhere else and utilise it in their own way."
Perhaps the whole notion of British embassies built by British people is
itself old-fashioned. The FCO has successfully collaborated with local
architects on many projects - Pakistani architect Anwar Said on the
striking Islamabad High Commission, for example, or on the recently
completed Tunis embassy, by local architect Lofti Rebai. British
embassies have even taken to cohabiting with other nationalities under
one roof, with the Germans and Dutch in Dar es Salaam, for example, or
with the French in some parts of Africa.
In light of the government's expressed intentions to reduce the number
of civil-service jobs, Britain's cumbersome diplomatic operation could
well prove unsustainable. "The notion that we necessarily need a
full-blown permanent embassy in every location may well change," says
Metcalfe. "But I think there will always be a need for people on the
ground, talking to the local community and informing policy-making at
home." In Baghdad, the FCO experimented with a "flatpack" embassy, a
prefabricated facility delivered in containers to be set up in 12 weeks.
Ultimately, it proved to be too risky, but the concept could one day
come to replace the full-blown ambassadorial system. Now that would be
21st-century.