Architect KieranTimberlake was selected from a group of four finalists in a competition to design the new U.S. Embassy in London; Weidlinger is the structural and blast engineer.

New York, NY – February 23, 2010 – The U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Louis B. Susman, and Acting Director of the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO), Adam Namm, announced that KieranTimberlake of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, won the design competition for the New London Embassy. Weidlinger Associates will support KieranTimberlake by providing structural and blast engineering services. Ground breaking is anticipated to take place in 2013 and construction to be completed in 2017.

The new embassy meets all the required security standards while honoring the English tradition of urban parks and gardens as the context for many civic buildings. Alternatives to perimeter walls and fences are achieved through landscape design. The embassy is located in Wandsworth Borough, south of the Thames River, between Battersea Park and Vauxhall, 1 mile (1.6 km) southwest of the Houses of Parliament. Its almost five-acre Nine Elms site is within an emerging commercial and residential area of London’s Central Activity Zone.

The chancery building is a transparent, crystalline cube atop a colonnade, simultaneously efficient and evocative. Its surface is given form through the interface between a faceted external solar shading and collection system and the blast-resistant glazing. A four-sided colonnade forms the base of the building, an accessible and sheltering form that has long evoked the architecture of democracy.

OBO has used juried design competitions in only four instances: Berlin, Beijing and twice now in London. Among the reasons they articulated for the selection was that “KieranTimberlake’s design met the goal of creating a modern, welcoming, timeless, safe, and energy efficient embassy for the 21st century,” and “the concept holds the greatest potential for developing a truly iconic embassy and is on the leading edge of sustainable design.”

A primary goal of the design team is to demonstrate exceptional environmental leadership beyond the leading edge of practice when the building is completed. The designers have established goals of LEED Platinum and BREEAM Outstanding, balancing energy and environmental design issues with the overall project goals of openness, diplomacy, functionality, security and value.

Other members of the winning design team are Arup for sustainability, MEP/FP and civil engineering; Olin for landscape architecture; Gensler for workplace design; Davis Langdon for cost consulting; and Sako & Associates for technical security.