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by notauser 2119 days ago
Diplomatic buildings have often been strong points designed to keep staff safe in uncertain times. This is true even in safer locations; the new US embassy in London is very much a fort although the defensive features (like the water-filled moat/pond, and bollards hidden in the hedges) are well integrated into the landscaping.

The new site is probably considerably harder to assault than their old building, even though that looked more like a military building. The Grovesnor Square building was so ugly that even the official picture on the US Embassy website tries to hide it from view behind some trees!

https://uk.usembassy.gov/our-relationship/policy-history/rcg...
1 comments
scatters 2119 days ago
Some people are unable to recognize great architecture when they see it. Saarinen's building is applauded as one of the finest modernist structures in Britain and is rightly Grade II listed.

https://www.economist.com/prospero/2017/09/26/the-american-e...

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throwanem 2119 days ago
Some people are unable to recognize awful architecture when they see it. I like a lot of Saarinen's work, especially his furniture, but even Homer nods, and his Grosvenor Square building looks like a cinderblock with a grudge.
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eternalban 2119 days ago
The vocabulary he chose to express this building is rather ungraceful in concrete, quite unlike his curvilinear works. The main issue is that the post-beam elements in the facade are poorly scaled. I haven't seen the plans, nor the section, so possibly the 'masterpiece' is inner beaty, but on the outside, it is a jumble of poorly scaled elements.

Also to call this, as the (know-it-all) Economist does, a "modern classic" is wrong. This is a pseudo-brutalist work, hardly high modernism. The contemporary Seagram's building (1958) is Modernism.

Another contemporary work relevant here (Paul Rudolph's Yale School of Architecture, 1963) shares some of the vocabulary of this work. And Rudolph knew how to design rectilinear concrete buildings. Saarinen clearly didn't.

[p.s. It is possible that the scale distortions in the front are (building) program driven, to address security considerations. The crit remains.]

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exolymph 2119 days ago
It is telling that you had to reference the building's bona fides to make your argument. And I _like_ brutalism!
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bergstromm466 2119 days ago
> Some people are unable to recognize great architecture when they see it.

Yes because taste is totally not subjective...

Why not just share that you think it's beautiful instead? Does everyone have to agree with you?

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