US ambassador to London Louis B Sussman has declared KieranTimberlake’s environmentally-conscious glass cube design the winning design for a US embassy in London’s Nine Elms ,on the south bank of the Thames.
The sale of the Eero Saarinen-designed Grosvenor Square building to Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company last year will pay for the building.
Wandsworth council has granted outline planning permission.
The building is expected to break ground in 2013, with completion envisaged for 2017.
The Guardian reports that the only two British members of the seven-strong design jury, Lord Rogers and Lord Palumbo, “fought to the death” against their American counterparts.
They argued the winning design was not world class and was unfit to represent the US in Britain.
The Independent’s architecture correspondent describes it as epitomising “the post-war 9/11 bunker mentality that has swept through embassy design since the Twin Towers fell”.
24/02/10 Financial Times 1, 4
Guardian 13
Independent 9
