US Embassy | Wandsworth | Prep

[ill tonkso]

For some reason I can imagine this in Manchester moreso than London. Would look great on the banks of the Irwell surrounded by Mancunian Redbrick.

[DarJoLe]

Went to the Building Centre to see the others. I can see why Ken and Richard Rogers are all for the Morphosis design with it's amazing atrium space but there's something quite unresolved about the rest of the design that I think could really date quite quickly.

The winning design really is the purest design going. The cube is perfect, there's a diagram showing how each element fits the golden ratio and it being diagonal to the river gives its occupants a perfect view of the Eye and Houses of Parliament. Have we got a perfect cube building in London before? I don't think so. The round gardens ground the building and the slight mound gives it an iconic status, and the gardens inside the cube are going to be excellent spaces. My only fear is the surrounding buildings; if anything these need to be a complete opposite to keep the crystal nature of the cube, and I would be happy to see these clad in some sort of stone to achieve this, or very dark or coloured glass. Dare I say they would even try and be a bit brutalist in nature but I know the likelihood of this is zilcho.

The Meier and Pei designs do nothing for me and feel quite 1960s in their conception.

Morphosis (Thom Mayne)


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Pei Cobb Freed & Partners


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Richard Meir & Partners


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KieranTimberlake (winning design)


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image hosted on flickr

[TallBox]

The Meir design is nice, but perhaps more suited to Berkeley (as in CA's)'s climate than Battersea's

[i_like_concrete]

If they combined the landscaping of Timberlake's proposal with the shape and facade of Pei's, it'd be perfect. There's a very subtle elegance to the Pei proposal that got lost at ground level, which is a shame, but I'm not averse to the winning design at all . It'll definitely be an interesting building.

[Futureshapeof]

I love this proposal, it's like a crystal version of the white tower.

Do you reckon they'll put crocs in the moat?

[heywindup]

Originally Posted by Futureshapeof

I love this proposal, it's like a crystal version of the white tower.

Do you reckon they'll put crocs in the moat?

Since it's the Americans, I would say sharks for the extra security measure.

[DarJoLe]

With some good lighting we could get this!

[delores]

I hope we don't get another 'More' London surrounding this building, if fosters is involved its looking worrying.

[Black Cat]

Originally Posted by delores

I hope we don't get another 'More' London surrounding this building, if fosters is involved its looking worrying.

I suspect this is exactly what will happen, though the cube may be less visible than the egg-like City Hall.

My thought when I saw the cube design is that the Borg have arrived.

[DarJoLe]

UK FIRMS TO DESIGN AREA AROUND US EMBASSY
25 February, 2010
By David Rogers

Farrells to masterplan 6ha site, as Kieran Timberlake wins building

British practices Farrells, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, AHMM and Flacq have all won roles on a huge redevelopment of the area surrounding the new US Embassy in London.

Philadelphia practice Kieran Timberlake was announced as the winner of the competition to design the £1 billion embassy on the River Thames on Tuesday evening but the practice immediately downplayed talk of a British collaborator.

However, Farrells revealed it was meeting with Kieran Timberlake on Wednesday, as BD went to press, because it is masterplanning a 6ha site within the Nine Elms area, which is owned by developer Ballymore and encircles the embassy building itself.

The first phase will feature 800 units across three blocks ranging from six to 11 storeys and designed by Feilden Clegg, AHMM and Flacq, and boasting other features including retail and a health club.

Plans for the second phase include a further 1,000 homes along with office space and a large entrance square to the new embassy.

Farrells partner John Letherland said collaboration with Kieran Timberlake would now be vital.

“It’s essential that we interface with them,” he said. “It’s important to get it [the masterplan] right.”

As part of the embassy bidding process, the shortlisted US firms — which also included Morphosis, Pei Cobb Freed and Richard Meier — flew over to London last autumn to meet Letherland.

Letherland added: “The big thing about the US embassy is that it will trigger regeneration. It will change a swathe of land in that area.”

Two other British firms, Arup and cost consultant Davis Langdon, are already working on Kieran Timberlake’s winning plans for the embassy. But when asked on Tuesday whether local practices would be needed to work on designs, practice co-founder James Timberlake said: “We haven’t got that far yet. We’ll need to speak to our client.”

Kieran Timberlake expects to have another 18 months of design work to complete before main construction work starts in 2013. Building work, which will also go to a US contractor, will last four years, with the embassy’s 1,000 staff due to move into the new building in 2017.

The total cost of the 12-storey building is expected to be as high as the US embassies in Baghdad and Islamabad, Pakistan — with security features including bollards and crash barriers being hidden in surrounding trees and bushes and a 30m-long “anti-climbing” wall.

Farrells expects to submit a masterplan application for the site along with detailed design for the first phase by June.

British jurors favoured rival morphosis scheme

The only two British members of the competition jury for the country’s new US embassy wanted a rival scheme by Morphosis to be chosen over Kieran Timberlake’s winning design, it has emerged.

It is only the fourth time the US State Department has used a jury for a new embassy competition but Richard Rogers (pictured) and fellow peer Peter Palumbo thought the winning design was too boring, according to a report in the Guardian.

They preferred the Morphosis design, by Pritzker Prize winner Thom Mayne, which the pair claimed was “touched by genius”.

Ballymore, the developer who sold the land to the US government agreed the Morphosis design was more eye-catching for sightseers. “It would have got people down there,” said Richard Probert, the firm’s senior development manager.

He admitted the developer was worried an embassy resembling a fortified bunker “would have been a problem” but added: “The design they’ve gone for is safe, it’s not going to offend and there’s a decent amount of green.”

[delores]

Personally I think Timberlakes scheme was probably the most convincing, Pei Cobb Freed was ok but the ground level is terrible and Morphosis's just looked a bit hacked together.

[ghost101]

So they don't mind tall buildings around the embassy itself? Good to hear.

[skyscraperian]

Interesting building.
I saw this project in Best Projects 2010 Contest http://www.constructionfamily.com/ga...3&image_id=117

[DrewHallam]

I like it, looks like a borg cube.

[TallBox]

Would be cool if Richard Rogers had done a similar design, with all the MEP plant on the outside, like a real Borg cube. (Imagine Lloyds in the shape of a cube)

[Swissdave]

I don't have any pictures yet - but it's worth noting that demolition is well underway on this site, with almost everything (including the quite-new and quite-architectural TSO headquarters building) having been pulled down remarkably quickly. Hoardings are up, with the website prominently advertised as http://embassy-quarter.co.uk (don't all rush at once, there's a Ballymore logo on the website but that's about it so far!). More work will be needed to clear the entire site (not least as Ponton Road is going to have to be moved by about 20 metres under current plans).

[Swissdave]

A couple of rather unexciting pictures of the site taken on Friday. This is where the TSO building used to be, and covers the western part of the embassy site. Have a look at Google street view, of Nine Elms Lane, to get a feel for how big the old TSO building was; IMO it was one of the better and more distinctive buildings in this rather dreary area, though far smaller than the Timberlake embassy. There's also an old photo of the TSO entrance area here.

Curiously Ballymore have cleared the office building, but left (for the time being) the big silver warehouse behind, which was part of the same complex (you can see the remains of the link building on the side of the warehouse).



Between this site and the Ponton Road there is another large building, the long-established Jack Barclay Bentley showroom, which is still in use (though whose days are somewhat numbered); I understand they got quite a generous settlement to find a new site.

The picture below is looking in a south west direction from Nine Elms Road; the red building is the Royal Mail sorting office (which is not moving as part of the project, and which will be the western neighbour of the new embassy area) -

[lyonsdown 2.0]

I like the cube design but are all the buildings in the surrounding area of the model also going to be built with it?

[Swissdave]

Unlike the embassy itself, which has a detailed design, I think the surrounding buildings are just massing concepts at this stage, to gain broad-brush approval for the allowable height and shape of the buildings - with the design details to be sorted out (DarJole's post (#170 above) quotes a report on this).

As Building Design reported (link here - they've been doing a very good run of reporting on the embassy and it's well worth the free registration if the site asks for it), security concerns mean that UK architects can design these ancillary buildings, but not the embassy itself which has to be an in-house US operation.

There's clearly a residential element, though these look quite big & dense for flats. I'm not sure if all of these surrounding buildings are intended to be sold or commercially let, to cover some of the cost of building the new embassy, or if some will be used by lesser parts of the embassy. Unlike the embassy they have roads running past and so are not high security so I doubt that they would house anything too important.

There is provision for several through routes to the adjacent sites in the layout of these buildings, though the other end of these roads doesn't really lead anywhere at the moment (in some cases direclty into warehouses) - presumably someone;s assuming that the area around the 6 hectare site will also be changing a lot in the next five years.

The site currently being demolished is the full area of the proposal, and includes the space for these other buildings. I doubt the Ambassador will want to be based in the middle of a wasteland, so we can say with some certainty that something will get built.

[london lad]

The cost of the US embassy is separate from the rest of the area/ Ballymore sold the site to the US for the embassy who are funding it themselves, largely through the sale of the current US Embassy.

Not sure what Ballymore have planned for the rest of the land they own. Probably mixed use. There has apparently been talk of other embassies looking to relocate to here but I would guess most of it will be residential.