Comments on: New London Embassy by KieranTimberlake

By: Lee Corbusier

Lee Corbusier — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:07:26 +0000

Based on the words and pictures presented above, the proposal is adequate. Quite successful. Decent. Just nowhere near ‘good’.

There’s certainly no clear argument for it – just 1500 words of box ticking waffle.

The lack of vision, ambition or honesty is utterly depressing.

By: flytoget

flytoget — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:25:50 +0000

This is a very decent work. A building that is cohesive, straightforward, open, sophisticated, respectful and sustainable. In fact, these are the very values upon which the US culture is based and this building translates those quite successfully.

By: Lee Corbusier

Lee Corbusier — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:39:05 +0000

Wow that’s ham fisted.

Read that ‘concept’ again – what empty bullshit.
No love, no passion, no ideas, no opinions, no analysis, no understanding.

‘Our building will be closed, but will look open because it’s glass.’
‘Our building will be glass, but we can say it’s eco friendly in the press notes.’

Embassies can be a showcase for the best of one culture in the context of another – like the beautiful finnish embassy in Washington D.C.

By: el radius

el radius — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:57:18 +0000

i don’t mind this project.. it is an efficient box, with a lacey dress.. overall it will probably sit within the city quite well.. it doesn’t come across as a brash, loud and annoying.. qualities that many other architects and us trvaelers suffer from..so overall kind of respectful which possibly a project such as this demands…

By: recon::decon

recon::decon — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:18:35 +0000

I think few people on this forum understand that architecture is a lot more than form making (which is evident with the shear amount of unsubstantiated praise every Zaha project gets). Honestly if this recession brings one good thing it will seeing the end of form-obsessed design and the celebrity designers they came with and a return to for less superficial aspects of architecture.

Also what you have to understand is that US embassies have to deal with more security restrictions and constraints than almost every other country so many of the “design” decisions are already predetermined. Honestly if you look at the submissions from Morphosis and I.M.Pei they really are not that dissimilar from this submission… basically a glass object sitting atop a plinth in a landscape. Pei just decided to make his glass object an ellipse and Mayne put the ellipse in a blender (along with bombing the landscape).