Nice Presentation on New London Embassy, Where Physical Security is Achieved By "Sleight of Hand"

 

Ah, the Crystal Fortress! 

Was a glass cube on a small site located in a former industrial zone worth a billion dollars? I'd say that it was, at least for those who appreciate architectural understatement in their diplomatic premises. 

Please enjoy this quick program about "how the US built its most hi-tech and controversial embassy," and join me in my high regard for OBO.

U.S. Embassy London's Contraband-Filled Bushes

The current U.S. Embassy

The Wall Street Journal had a nice article last week about the common practice of embassy visitors using the surrounding landscaping to hide the items they aren't allowed to bring inside.

Read it here: London’s No. 1 Hiding Place: The Bushes Outside the U.S. Embassy - Items such as bike helmets and scissors are prohibited at security, so many visitors stash them in a nearby park

Hey folks, just wait until they open the New U.S. Embassy in London. You'll be delighted to find lots of trees, bushes, and a lovely water feature in which to stash your stuff. Do step carefully if you choose to go into the water. 

The new U.S. Embassy, opening soon

Wine and Cheese Designs on a Coffee and Doughnuts Budget

New York Times photo

Wine and cheese? My good friends in the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations would love to go to charettes like that again! But, these days, I doubt the contractors dish out anything so good.

What put me in mind of wine and cheese was listening to the morning session of today's House Foreign Affairs Committee budget hearing, in which Representative Darrell Issa, questioning SecState Tillerson, spoke up for the plain but functional standard embassy designs that OBO built in the past, and denounced the "New York wine & cheese liberals” advocating works of art whom he believes took over our embassy design planning during SecState Hillary Clinton's tenure.

Like that "glass palace" in London (see this) that costs too much and which we haven't even finished yet, for example. Let's go back to the "efficient design and build" practices of the past, Issa said.

Tillerson really didn't speak to the design issue, but he did assure Issa that the Administration's 2018 budget plan will maintain OBO's current new construction program for another year, although we'll run into "planning difficulties” in 2019.

House Oversight Committee Hearing on New London Embassy

The Crystal Fortress, in architectural vision

The New London Embassy construction project has come in for criticism from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee before, and it will again on Tuesday, December 8, at 10 AM. Watch this space for live video: Review of the New London Embassy Project.

While you're waiting please enjoy Embassy London's weekly photos of the construction site, and let your inner architect be inspired by the designer's vision:

[The State Department] wanted to pursue a new paradigm in embassy design, termed Design Excellence, which emphasizes the role of architecture in diplomacy. This new model seeks buildings that represent the ideals of the American government—giving priority to transparency, openness, and equality, and drawing on the best of American architecture, engineering, technology, art, and culture.

Here's hoping my good friends in Overseas Buildings Operations will send their first string to handle the Committee. Which means Ambassador Will Moser. I really don't think that OBO's Director and her Deputy Director in Charge of Design Excellence are up to handling the hostile questioning that is likely to come to them.

New London Embassy Inspires "Embassy Gardens" See-Through Sky Pool

Embassy Gardens 'sky pool' is in foreground

Well, well, well, it seems that our New London Embassy (NLE) - and that's the official name and acronym of that signature new embassy construction project - has already inspired an adjacent housing development to be named the "Embassy Gardens."

The New London Embassy is that showpiece of design excellence currently being built by my good friends in the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations. The housing development that will go up next door has no connection to either the embassy or the U.S. government. However, it will reflect the NLE's architectural style by featuring a highly prominent and impractical bit of glass construction, kind of the same way our whole new embassy will be a highly prominent and impractical glass construction.

Here's a critical view of the Embassy Gardens 'sky pool' or 'swim bridge' that will connect the two residential wings:

Embassy Gardens, a major new housing development in the Nine Elms district near the Battersea Power Station, may feature a floating “sky pool,” a swimmy bridge suspended between two buildings. According to Homes & Property, it will measure 90 feet long, 19 feet wide, and 10 feet deep, making it one of London’s most distinctive building improvements.

The sky pool is designed to allow condo dwellers at the Nine Elms development to casually traverse the distance between two of its towers by swimming laps. The purpose is not merely to make it easier for residents—and only residents—to get from one rooftop deck to another. It allows them to be seen while doing so.

Nine Elms has a visibility problem: It insists on being seen. It flaunts. The sky pool is cousin to the Nine Elms-to-Pimlico bridge, an outlandish piece of design in the works for the development. (A winner in the architecture competition for that bridge will be named in October.) But a suspended swimming pool is so much worse than an amenity disguised as infrastructure, such as the Garden Bridge. The sky pool secures an ultra-elite experience at the cost of casually insulting a city in the grips of an affordable-housing crisis.

A closer-view artist's depiction of the sky pool / bridge

I am envious of whoever it was who came up with the phrase "an amenity disguised as infrastructure," so perfectly does it describe my own opinion of the New London Embassy's use of glass for exterior walls.

Utah Man Threatens To Fire On Government Targets

Get some, get some, get some!

Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) will take over the chairmanship of the House Oversight Committee in the next Congress, and today he shared his enthusiasm about this new assignment with the Salt Lake Tribune. See Chairman Chaffetz eyes ‘target-rich’ environment, but Benghazi isn’t one:

The Utah Republican, who flew to Libya a month after the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks to ask questions about Benghazi, says there are plenty of other issues to keep his committee busy: Secret Service missteps, IRS targeting of conservative groups and embassy security.

"It’s a target-rich environment. There’s plenty of waste, fraud and abuse," Chaffetz says. "There’s a lot out there. ... There are investigations that have been ongoing for more than a year that you haven’t even heard of."

Not that Chaffetz wants to let Benghazi go.

Let it go? No, not likely.  

Standing By

I poked my nose into the OBO front office today, and did not see any cardboard boxes or packing tape lying around. Could be the rumors were wrong, or could be I was a day or two early.

The Price of Excellence in Embassy Design

The Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) has been getting a lot of criticism lately for the escalating costs of its new embassy construction projects, and especially for shifting away from its former program of down-and-dirty "Standard Embassy Design" and toward the much tonier practice of "Design Excellence."

See the CBS News report Are modern U.S. embassies becoming too costly to build? for the arguments against Design Excellence. They boil down to: it costs more and takes longer than the standard designs did, so you can't do as many of them, and therefore you end up leaving some embassy staff in old and unsecure facilities for longer than would be necessary if you did less excellent designs.

Exhibit A for the case against Design Excellence is Mexico City, which was the first new embassy project to be formally solicited under the Design Excellence program. See more on that here. Diplopudit's recent post (New Embassy Mexico City Estimated to Cost $350-$450M Now More Pricey At $763 Million) is a comprehensive summary of the current situation.

The original solicitation for Mexico city included that estimated construction cost of between $350 million and $450 million, and also stated that "the Department of State project shall demonstrate the value of true integrated design that balances aesthetics, cost, constructability and reliability, following the Guiding Principles of Design Excellence." You can read about those principles - or "Principles" - here.

So the project's estimated cost doubled before the first shovel-full of dirt was turned? That is far from excellent. In fact, the Mexico City project might end up being a better demonstration of the unintended consequences of the Guiding Principles of Design Excellence than of their stated goals.

But the biggest slam on OBO this week, the piledriver, the possible knock-out blow for Design Excellence, was delivered by the House Oversight Committee. The committee, by which I really mean Representative Chaffetz, wrote to SecState Kerry requesting a long and comprehensive list of documents concerning new construction planning and Design Excellence practices and justifications, both in general and for several specific projects.

This week, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif) and National Security Subcommittee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), pressed Secretary of State John Kerry after reports [one by CBS News and one by Al Jazeera] that State Department embassy design efforts have recently emphasized style at the expense of security and cost efficiency. The Committee has requested information from the State Department about specific construction projects that have suffered from problems and extended building times resulting from a deviation from the efficient standard embassy design approach, which stresses security and functionality, to the new “design excellence” program, which stresses openness and innovation.

After all that bad news about cost escalations and spiraling-out-of-control design excellence, I would like to point out one recent instance in which OBO completed a new embassy project for what seems to be a reasonable cost. It dedicated a United States Dedicates New U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic this week for the rather normal price of $193 million.

According to the project's fact sheet, that $193 million paid for a five-story office building with 26,000 square meters of space, plus a support annex and a Marine House, on a compound of 16 acres. The consular section has over 50 windows (!) for visa services, and the whole place has all kinds of energy efficiency, sustainability, saving-the-rainforest, greeny-eco stuff.

Not bad. Even better, on June 12, OBO solicited proposals for new construction at the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, which include installing a pre-engineered structure to serve as a temporary office annex. "Pre-engineered" as in a prefabricated, or modular building. Something better than a trailer but not as architecturally satisfying as a real building.

A project is in design to construct new housing, expand the existing Marine Security Guard Residence (MSGR), a temporary office annex (installation and fit-out of pre-engineered structure), expand existing American Club, gymnasium and commissary, and update the compound utilities to support the new buildings on the existing Consulate Compound which opened in 2011 [see more on that here] ... and other site work including site utilities, landscaping and surface parking.

The solicitation states that the approximate cost for all that work is $35 million to $47 million. Quite the bargain basement price, for buildings of the size and nature called for in the solicitation.

Pre-engineered buildings are a common practice in the construction world. Most commercial buildings, including bank branches, 'big box' stores, healthcare facilities, etc., are pre-engineered. But this is the first instance I can recall of OBO adding such a building to an existing diplomatic compound that is already full of purpose-designed offices and residences.

For OBO to go with a pre-engineered office building is as far from Design Excellence as it gets. Definitely déclassé. But it's also, most likely, a big reason for the truly excellent cost estimate on that new Karachi project.