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Comment by slim | Hacker News Reader

On the same vein, US embassy in Tunis is closer to a fortification than to a diplomatic building. It even has a turret. It seems that other US embassies around the world became fortifications after 2001.

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Diplomatic buildings have often been strong points designed to keep staff safe in uncertain times. This is true even in safer locations; the new US embassy in London is very much a fort although the defensive features (like the water-filled moat/pond, and bollards hidden in the hedges) are well integrated into the landscaping.

The new site is probably considerably harder to assault than their old building, even though that looked more like a military building. The Grovesnor Square building was so ugly that even the official picture on the US Embassy website tries to hide it from view behind some trees!

https://uk.usembassy.gov/our-relationship/policy-history/rcg...

Some people are unable to recognize great architecture when they see it. Saarinen's building is applauded as one of the finest modernist structures in Britain and is rightly Grade II listed.

https://www.economist.com/prospero/2017/09/26/the-american-e...

Some people are unable to recognize awful architecture when they see it. I like a lot of Saarinen's work, especially his furniture, but even Homer nods, and his Grosvenor Square building looks like a cinderblock with a grudge.

> Some people are unable to recognize great architecture when they see it.

Yes because taste is totally not subjective...

Why not just share that you think it's beautiful instead? Does everyone have to agree with you?

The vocabulary he chose to express this building is rather ungraceful in concrete, quite unlike his curvilinear works. The main issue is that the post-beam elements in the facade are poorly scaled. I haven't seen the plans, nor the section, so possibly the 'masterpiece' is inner beaty, but on the outside, it is a jumble of poorly scaled elements.

Also to call this, as the (know-it-all) Economist does, a "modern classic" is wrong. This is a pseudo-brutalist work, hardly high modernism. The contemporary Seagram's building (1958) is Modernism.

Another contemporary work relevant here (Paul Rudolph's Yale School of Architecture, 1963) shares some of the vocabulary of this work. And Rudolph knew how to design rectilinear concrete buildings. Saarinen clearly didn't.

[p.s. It is possible that the scale distortions in the front are (building) program driven, to address security considerations. The crit remains.]

It is telling that you had to reference the building's bona fides to make your argument. And I _like_ brutalism!

Federal buildings in the US built after the Oklahoma bomb are also very fortified and don't have a a lot of windows.

It’s a shame that a diplomatic mission of such a close friend needs to be armoured like this in London.

Meanwhile the US Embassy in Canberra, Australia is a 18th century Georgian style colonial townhouse.

Photo: https://au.usembassy.gov/embassy-consulates/canberra/

Canberra is an isolated, artificial city, where everyone who lives there works for the Government or provides services to those workers. Inside Canberra itself, the embassies are all clustered together. Its secure by design.

> a 18th century Georgian style colonial townhouse

Not sure where you're reading this... it was built in the 1940s. I mean Canberra itself wasn't founded until 1901 and the oldest building is from 1845... so not sure how you think there was a townhouse there in the 18th century.

And it's inside a secure compound. And someone rammed the gates not long ago.

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