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US diplomats to get new London digs

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The United States unveiled something top secret today in London. It’s the design for a brand new embassy in the British capital. The US has had an embassy in central London for some 200 years. But space and security concerns are forcing a move to slightly less swanky, but more secure, digs across the Thames River. The World’s Laura Lynch reports on the winning design (pictured), submitted by Philadelphia-based firm Kieran Timberlake. See all the finalists in the slideshow below.

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MARCO WERMAN:  The United States unveiled a secret today in London.  It’s the design for a new embassy in the British capitol.  After 200 years in the same place, space and especially security concerns are forcing a move.  The World’s Laura Lynch reports.

LAURA LYNCH:  Kept under wraps for days, the new design is now on public display and a very curious ambassador, Louis Susman, was already imagining himself on the inside, looking out.

LOUIS SUSMAN:  Well I love it.  I love it.  If you also noticed, there was a spot that had a little garden area.  That’s the ambassador’s office, so I like that.

LYNCH:  That’s a tiny part of the design created by the Philadelphia Firm of Kieran Timberlake.  The building itself is a cube, sheathed in a polymer membrane, perched on top of columns.  The challenge for the architects was to create an embassy that would suggest openness, but would still meet the stiff demands for a high level of security.  Architect James Timberlake believes he’s made it work.

JAMES TIMBERLAKE:  We were able to use the landscape as the security device.  I think historically in the UK and elsewhere, you know, castles and other fortifications have always used landscape as a paradigm as well and that’s how that’s been employed here.

LYNCH:  So this then is a sort of modern day castle, pools and grassy mounds are the moats of the 21^st century.  They may help the grounds look like welcoming parkland, but they’re also barriers to those who might try to mount an attack.  Adam Namm oversees the building of embassies for the State Department.

ADAM NAMM:  What this and any embassy design gives us is the requisite setback from the street, which is the most important thing in terms of protection against a bomb blast.

LYNCH: The design of this embassy stands apart from the standard model that the U.S. has used to build about 60 embassies around the world since 1998.  That’s when attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 301 people and injured 5,000 others.  Security concerns spurred the decision a few years ago to relocate this embassy.  The current one sits on some very valuable real estate in the ritzy Mayfair neighborhood in London, but over the years, concrete barriers and blast walls made it resemble a bunker and made Americans seem aloof.  The new site, on the south side of the river, allows for more subtle security but the neighborhood itself isn’t so nice.  The Guardian’s Jonathan Glancy.

JONATHAN GLANCY:  I think it’s a great shame for the American Embassy; U.S. embassy will be across the Thames in this area.  It’ a rough area but the point is really, it’s a long way from the center of London so even if the embassy is a star and it may well be very peaceful indeed, it will be remote from London and in particular from Londoners.

LYNCH:  But the design is already getting some good reviews from other critics and from some locals.  Ravi Govindia, a local politician, calls the design great.

RAVI GOVINDIA:  I genuinely like, I really do, like what is called low key but very effective security, I’m sure and that feeling of openness.  If you stand in the piazza, you are not dwarfed by you know, USA in your face.  You still see the river, you still see the bridge across, you still see the road and you still feel that you are part of the neighborhood.

LYNCH:  The estimated price tag for the embassy is about one billion dollars US, making it one of the most expensive the US has ever built but officials say they’ll have all the money they need by selling the old digs for top dollar in London’s still hot real estate market.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

WERMAN:  You can see the design for the new U.S. embassy in London at TheWorld.org.

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