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The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has released a report on the distressingly low state of contemporary U.S. diplomatic design, a report done for the State Department's Office of Overseas Building Operations (OBO). It calls upon the Guardians of High Culture to fight back against the Troglodytes of Government Security, those lowbrow types who supposedly gained the upper hand over Art and Beauty after the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Beirut and Kuwait and haven't given it up since.
See the Washington Post's review of the report here.
Although a lowbrow type myself, I look forward to a clash over this stuff since I think the AIA makes many good recommendations, particularly the ones about changing the site selection criteria that help to drive new embassies into remote locations, adopting performance-based rather than prescriptive security standards, and preserving rather than replacing historic or culturally significant properties. It's been my experience that those things can all be accommodated without giving up a high level of protection against mob violence and truck-bombs.
So let the clash begin! Bring it on, you architects!