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Runners-up for U.S. Embassy in London: Mayne, Meier, Pei

By Christopher Hawthorne
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Earlier we reported that the Philadelphia firm KieranTimberlake has won a high-profile competition to design the new American embassy in London.

In an encouraging departure from recent federal practice, the State Department has also released renderings of designs by each of the other three finalists, giving the public a chance to see how four accomplished firms approached the task of suggesting a sense of openness while also meeting the strict security requirements that go along with any American embassy commission.

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The image above is by Thom Mayne and the Santa Monica firm Morphosis Architects. After the jump are, in order, proposed designs by Richard Meier & Partners Architects and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.

-- Christopher Hawthorne

Culture Monster Blog
Christopher Hawthorne

Christopher Hawthorne was the architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2004 to March 2018. Before coming to The Times, he was architecture critic for Slate and a frequent contributor to the New York Times. He is the author, with Alanna Stang, of “The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture.” Hawthorne grew up in Berkeley and has a bachelor’s degree from Yale, where he readied himself for a career in criticism by obsessing over the design flaws in his dormitory, designed by Eero Saarinen.

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