Hasta La Ideas

pWhen my buddies and I travel overseas, we’ll often split up to cover more ground, then re-up to report our findings and follow the most interesting trail. So it went last year when I was in London, and upon rejoining my friends Tony and Tomur at our hotel near Grosvenor Square, Tony remarked “Jesus–did you Isee/I the American Embassy around the corner?”/p

pA few minutes later we were standing in front of it. While most of the buildings in the area were plain and featureless, this one had this huge golden eagle with outstretched wings perched on top of it, big enough that if it fell it would flatten any Austin-Healy parked beneath it. It was blatantly American, and I could just picture the presumably British construction workers who put the building up hauling the golden bird into place with grim you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me expressions on their faces./p

div style=”align: right;”img src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/images/2010/03/0usemblond0.jpg” width=”468″ height=”235″ alt=”0usemblond0.jpg”//div

p[photo credit: Flickr user A HREF=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/dukejansen/143229007/” Duke Jansen/A]/p

pWell, I’ve just learned that building’s days are numbered, as the U.S. Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations A HREF=”http://www.usembassy.org.uk/new_embassy/new_embassy5.html” recently held a competition for a re-design/A. The winner was Philadelphia-based architecture firm A HREF=”http://kierantimberlake.com/home/index.html” KieranTimberlake/A:/p

blockquoteKieranTimberlake’s design met the goal of creating a modern, welcoming, timeless, safe and energy efficient embassy for the 21st century. Their concept most fully satisfied the requirements outlined in the design competition’s mission statement. The concept holds the greatest potential for developing a truly iconic embassy and is on the leading edge of sustainable design. KieranTimberlake is an architectural firm known for its commitment to innovation and environmental responsibility./blockquote

div style=”align: right;”img src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/images/2010/03/0usemblond.jpg” width=”468″ height=”1238″ alt=”0usemblond.jpg”//div

pYou’ll notice the eagle is gone–and that the new moat and earth barriers, which would presumably stop a suicide bomber in a van, address a very different issue. br /
/pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/competition/design_comp_results_kierantimberlakes_new_us_embassy_in_london_ditches_the_eagle_16063.asp”(more…)/a
pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/t6odSoyFksa2_07IV3oMfzfMcRc/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/t6odSoyFksa2_07IV3oMfzfMcRc/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/
a href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/t6odSoyFksa2_07IV3oMfzfMcRc/1/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/t6odSoyFksa2_07IV3oMfzfMcRc/1/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/p