Eideard

The State Department’s announcement on Tuesday that it had selected a design by the Philadelphia firm KieranTimberlake for its new embassy in London was not exactly uplifting news.

The proposed building — a bland glass cube clad in an overly elaborate, quiltlike scrim — is not inelegant by the standards of other recent American Embassies, but it has all the glamour of a corporate office block. It makes you wonder if the architects had somehow mistaken the critic Reyner Banham’s famous dismissal of the embassy’s 1960 predecessor on Grosvenor Square — “monumental in bulk, frilly in detail” — as something to strive for.

The project as a whole, however, is a fascinating study in how architecture can be used as a form of camouflage. The building is set in a spiraling pattern of two small meadows and a pond that have as much to do with defensive fortification as with pastoral serenity: an eye-opening expression of the irresolvable tensions involved in trying to design an emblem of American values when you know it may become the next terrorist target.

It’s hard to think of a project, in fact, that more perfectly reflects the country’s current struggle to maintain a welcoming, democratic image while under the constant threat of attack…

The abundance of green space contributes to the design’s environmentally friendly image. Circuitous paths weave through the park, which in renderings is full of young professionals. The main entry plaza for the building, which extends along the edge of the pond before slipping under one side of the colonnade, is conceived as a lively public space.

But the real function of these landscape elements is to serve as camouflaged security barriers. The northern pond is a reflecting pool — but also a castle moat. To the south, a concrete wall frames the outer edge of the lower meadow, which can be patrolled by guards.

Above it, walled off by a second barrier, the higher meadow can be used for occasional embassy events but will otherwise be closed to the public. To get to the plaza, visitors will have to pass first through a high-security entry pavilion, much as they do to enter the current embassy.

A result is an architectural sleight of hand. And the effect is likely to be oddly disquieting: an array of clearly visible public zones that will actually be inaccessible to the public.

Next time the Republicans are in power they’ll probably finish the moat. That may even be a necessity. Perhaps, Vauxhall Station will be the entrance to the British Green Zone.