The Rows On Embassy Rows

Public architecture is inherently political, and all the MORE SO for embassies. So it comes as little surprise that German architecture critics have given intense scrutiny to the new U.S. Embassy in Berlin, scheduled to open July 4, U.S. Independence Day, at Pariser Platz, Berlin's premier public place and the site of America's pre-World War II embassy. Yet while the 15,000-square-meter building is a handsome addition to the historic cityscape, German critics and the public at large have greeted it with scorn, comparing it to Fort Knox and deriding it as "banal" and even "monstrous." It is seen as little more than a memento from the despised George W. Bush administration.

The Berlin embassy is just one of dozens of U.S. government buildings abroad that have been built or renovated over the past decade. Strangely, it is bearing the brunt of the criticism, taking the heat for anti-American feelings and widespread antipathy toward the Bush administration. Some perspective is in order. This building is neither the forbidding fortress that some see, nor is it the cheap suburban-style warehouse imagined by others. It is thoroughly Berlin-specific, with color, scale and textural elements chosen to maintain the character of the historic location. In fact, the Berlin embassy marks a sharp departure from traditional U.S. Embassy designs, which tend to be far less sophisticated, and it is one of the few postwar projects deemed so important by the State Department that it sponsored a competition to select a design.

The first competition was for London, in 1956, when jurors picked Eero Saarinen to design a high-profile embassy on Grosvenor Square. This was at the height of the postwar building program when noted architects, including Edward Durell Stone (New Delhi), Josep Lluís Sert (Baghdad), Richard Neutra (Karachi) and Marcel Breuer (The Hague) enjoyed State Department patronage. Saarinen's prize-winning design for London utilized an unusual "diagrid" structural system and a Portland stone façade punctuated by large windows and highlighted by gold-colored anodized aluminum trim. The raised lobby level had gallery space for exhibitions and a spacious library accessible to the public.

But critics were unimpressed. With hindsight it is obvious that much of the criticism was a soft attack on the United States and its widening world role at that time. Saarinen's vocabulary was modern, but his design was clearly intended as a complement to nearby Georgian buildings. Critics lambasted it for being too showy and also too timid. They ridiculed the golden eagle over the entrance as a symbol of "xenophobia" and "the tragedy of Americanism." Their sweeping statements reflected political as much as architectural discontent.

By the late 1960s, U.S. embassies had become targets of anti-Americanism, and designs began to reflect the need for added security, particularly public-access control. After the 1983 bombing of U.S. facilities in Beirut, it was clear that the foreign building program needed an overhaul. Few embassies were adequately set back from vehicular traffic, and no structures were designed to withstand a blast. After a series of high-profile debacles, including the bugging of the new Moscow embassy, cost and security became the paramount concerns, and in the wake of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa the State Department standardized its designs, adopting an isolated walled compound as a model.

To speed production, it established a two-year timetable and rushed to produce scores of cookie-cutter buildings in capitals like Belmopan, Belize, and Bamako, Mali. More of these faceless—and yes, banal—buildings will soon replace existing embassies in some European capitals, including Oslo and The Hague. The newest opened in June in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. But the largest and costliest among them has already been built in Baghdad, where the United States spent $736 million to build a 42-hectare walled compound that contains some 21 buildings, including offices, residences and support facilities.