Image Credit : Richard Bryant
Project Overview
The US State Department has envisioned a new London embassy that will serve as the centrepiece of one of America's longest-standing and most valued relationships.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Project Brief
The State Department envisioned a new embassy that would serve as the centrepiece of one of America's longest-standing and most valued relationships. It also aspired to set a new paradigm in embassy design by representing the ideals of the American government—giving priority to transparency, openness, and equality, and drawing on the best of American architecture, engineering, technology, art, and culture.
The Nine Elms district, a South Bank industrial zone under intense redevelopment, offers a unique setting for the new embassy. With an estimated 1,000 daily visitors and 800 staff, the Embassy project is poised to establish a strong framework for the urbanisation of Nine Elms. A civic plaza and park contribute to this revitalisation by connecting the Thames embankment and Nine Elms Lane to a new pedestrian greenway extending from Vauxhall Station to Battersea.
Project Innovation/Need
The Embassy stands at the centre of this burgeoning area of London, with a public park containing a pond, walkways, seating, and landscape along its edges. Curving walkways continue into the interior of the building with gardens on each floor that extend the spiralling movement upward. The internal gardens evoke American landscapes, enhancing circulation by providing alternative paths through the building and informal meeting and gathering spaces.
The Embassy's form is that of a transparent crystalline cube set atop a monumental colonnade—a radiant beacon at the heart of Nine Elms. Its high-performance facade is made of laminated glazing and an outer envelope of ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), a transparent film shaped to minimize solar gain and glare, affording generous natural light throughout the interior and access to the site's striking views. The tonality of the envelope shifts with the weather and time of day.
The Embassy's design represents a holistic fusion of urbanism, building, and landscape. It is both evocative and performative, helping to define a new environment for diplomacy while mapping a passage toward a new diplomacy of the environment.
Sustainability
Many features of the Embassy serve multiple purposes to balance requirements into a cohesive and compelling whole. Water, energy and materials are managed with integrated building systems that work together and enhance each other. For instance, the pond is both a landmark and a component of the site's stormwater strategy, reducing the strain on municipal sewer systems while providing a source for landscape irrigation.
Architecture - Community & Civic
This award celebrates the design process and product of planning, designing and constructing form, space and ambience that reflect functional, technical, social, and aesthetic considerations. Consideration given for material selection, technology, light and shadow.
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