Benghazi ARB Follow-Up: Quick Comment Part 2

U.S. embassy life can be an endless series of temporary projects

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In Part 1, I commented about a couple of those Wise Men who are to shed their wisdom on the Department regarding best practices for security in high threat / high risk locations. Now, here's something else that I think is puzzling.

Recommendation 5 of the ARB report called for the Department to develop security standards expressly for temporary mission facilities. That makes great sense to me, since there is a vast difference between the sort of hasty facilities that we need to acquire and fit-out in expeditionary environments and the permanent Fortress Embassies that the Department might build in more stable places. 'Expeditionary' has to happen right now, making use of available materials and funds to improvise a minimum level of protection, whereas Fortress Embassies take several years to design and build and cost several hundred million dollars.

Two such different situations need two different sets of standards, right? You might think so.

Here's what the ARB recommended:

The Department should develop minimum security standards for occupancy of temporary facilities in high risk, high threat environments, and seek greater flexibility to make funds rapidly available for security upgrades at such facilities.

Here's how the Department's press release reported its action on that recommendation:

The Department has re-affirmed that Overseas Security Policy Board Standards apply to temporary facilities.

We identified flexible funding authorities to make improvements to our overseas facilities.

Aren't they talking past each other here? The ARB recommended the Department develop security standards for temporary facilities because, you know, it doesn't have any such standards now. The standards it has are intended for permanent situations.

To "reaffirm" that we'll apply the security standards we already have to temporary facilities seems to be a refusal to deal with the recommendation. Worse, it leaves those temporary facilities in the same bureaucratic limbo as Special Mission Benghazi, lacking the money and direction for serious security upgrades because they lack a permanent status.

To quote from the ARB report:

Special Mission Benghazi’s uncertain future after 2012 and its “non-status” as a temporary, residential facility made allocation of resources for security and personnel more difficult, and left responsibility to meet security standards to the working-level in the field, with very limited resources.

Having appropriate standards for temporary facilities - which means standards that aim for a lower, albeit more realistic and achievable level, of protection - would regularize what is now an ad hoc practice.

By the way, not all permanent U.S. diplomatic missions around the world meet those Overseas Security Policy Board standards that the Department just reaffirmed. Not even half of them do, according to none other than Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy.

As he told Congress:

More than half the U.S. diplomatic posts overseas may not fully meet security standards, a senior U.S. official told a hearing on Thursday that follows an attack on the mission in Benghazi in which the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans died.

Pat Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management at the State Department, told a House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee that the United States had a diplomatic presence at 283 locations around the world.

He said 97 safe and secure facilities had been completed since the 1999 passage of a U.S. law authorizing additional funding for security upgrades, including 70 full replacements of embassies or consulates, as well as some building of Marine guard quarters and office annexes.

"There remain approximately 158 posts that have facilities that may not fully meet current security standards," he said.

"Many of these facilities were built or acquired prior to the establishment of the current security standards, and others are subject to authorized waivers and/or exceptions."

The Department has completed many new construction projects since 2000, however, according to a publicly available presentation by the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations, only one in four U.S. government employees overseas (about 20,500 out of a total of 85,000) works in a Fortress Embassy.

The other three out of four work in a wide range of facilities, some better than others, but all of them somewhat less secure than a purpose-built modern embassy. They are either grandfathered or "subject to authorized waivers" due to the impracticality of fully meeting security standards retroactively in buildings the Department did not construct.

If that's the situation for our permanent facilities, then surely our less-than-permanent facilities will likewise fail to fully meet Overseas Security Policy Board standards. Why not accept that reality and develop security standards that are suitable and achievable for temporary occupancies?

I'll have another quick comment tomorrow or Saturday about the practical limits of hardening up conventional buildings.

 

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Better Late Than Never

Design sketch of a new U.S. Embassy Beirut

While the saga of the on-and-off new consulate construction project in Jeddah plays out, I should point out that the U.S. government recently issued a solicitation for the design and construction of a new U.S. Embassy in Beirut. That's always a good thing.

What's not such a good thing is that the solicitation was dated March 28, 2013, which is just three weeks short of thirty years since the Beirut embassy bombing. That incident led to the Inman Commission and to the business of building Fortress Embassies which has gone on ever since. Now, thirty long years later, we might be close to finally building a Fortress in Beirut.

From the solicitation:

This will be a design-bid-build project. The resultant contract shall be fixed price. The estimated construction cost is $526.231 million.

The new Embassy compound will be constructed on U.S. Government-owned property located in Aoukar, approximately 11 km north of Beirut city neat the site of the existing U.S. Embassy compound. The complex of buildings will be in the range of 78,636 gross square meters in area and will include a new Chancery, General Services Office/support buildings, parking structure, TDY lodging facility, Marine Security Guard Quarters (MSGQ), Chief of Missions Residence (CMR), Deputy Chief of Missions Residence (DCMR), Staff Housing, Compound Access Control (CAC) facilities, RSO Annex, Utility Building, Community Center, and vehicular/pedestrian screening facilities. The project site is approximately 17.8 hectare (43 acres) located on a steep hillside in a neighborhood of residential and light commercial uses. The land slopes east to west with a topographic change of approximately 100 meters. This project will be designed and constructed to achieve, as a goal, a LEED Silver rating.

By the way, the sketch I inserted above is not connected to the present solicitation. It is from the very first attempt to build a new U.S. Embassy in Beirut, back in 1957. That project was suspended during the Lebanese Civil War of 1958. History keeps repeating, huh?

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Fortress Embassies Are Back In Fashion

Photo courtesy Art in Embassies Program

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I'm trying to remember where I put my hardhat and steel-toe safety boots, because all the indications are that the State Department is about to go on another new embassy construction binge.

A key recommendation in the Benghazi Accountability Review Board report was that Congress revive the moribund Capital Security Construction Program by ramping up its funding to compensate for loss of purchasing power since the program was created in 2000. As Admiral Mullen noted during the ARB press briefing, since 2000 the new building program "fell off from 10 buildings - 10 new embassies a year to three, tied to budget constraints, et cetera," and the Board believes it should go back to that original target:

Recalling the recommendations of the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam ARBs, the State Department must work with Congress to restore the Capital Security Cost Sharing Program [here] at its full capacity, adjusted for inflation to approximately $2.2 billion in fiscal year 2015, including an up to ten-year program addressing that need, prioritized for construction of new facilities in high risk, high threat areas. It should also work with Congress to expand utilization of Overseas Contingency Operations funding to respond to emerging security threats and vulnerabilities and operational requirements in high risk, high threat posts.

We'll see whether or not Congress actually appropriates that $2.2 billion for more new embassy construction. The political winds are not blowing in the direction of more spending these days. It's just as likely Congress will instead allow reprogramming from other accounts, which would let them check the 'I-voted-to-improve-embassy-security' box while at the same time not giving the Department a budget increase.

If State really does get more money for embassy construction, I think it will come as a mixed blessing to many in OBO and to their fellow fans of embassy design in the larger architectural community. They were still celebrating the liberation of Art from the shackles of Security by means of OBO's new design excellence program when last September's embassy attacks occurred. Critics of Fortress Embassies could see the writing on the wall after that, and they didn't like it the least little bit.

Consider their disappointment. After twelve years of mass-producing standardized diplokitsch (see the mugshots here) they were finally about to get back into the real design business. And the cherry on top is that the incoming SecState is himself a leading critic of Fortresses who has said this of the post-2000 new embassy construction program:

“We are building some of the ugliest embassies I’ve ever seen,” Senator John F. Kerry said in 2009. “We’re building fortresses around the world. We’re separating ourselves from people in these countries. I cringe when I see what we’re doing.”

All the stars were lining up for a return to the sublime and mysterious architectural values of the era before the now-departed General Williams set OBO on a more mundane course after the East Africa embassy bombings. Now that we are back in post-disaster mode, OBO must once again turn out more new buildings, and I think design excellence will take a backseat to security and numbers. Less quality, more quantity.

Can OBO go back to grinding them out Williams-style after they've done Beijing? I'll be interested in seeing whether this subject comes up at Senator Kerry's confirmation hearing.

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How Many Fortress Embassies?

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Let's talk Fortress Embassies. First, how many U.S. Embassies are fortresses?

Judging by most of the news stories about the attack in Benghazi, and all of the congressional questions about presumed waivers of security standards, anyone would get the impression that every place except Benghazi is a big ol' fortress.

However, if you read the 2010 GAO Report on New Embassy Compounds, you will learn otherwise:

State has located nearly one-quarter of overseas staff in NECs [New Embassy Complexes], which posts said are an improvement over older facilities.

What about the other three-quarters of our overseas staff? Evidently, they occupy something other than fortresses, for better or worse. Many fans of architecture and open diplomacy would say it's for the better. Whichever it is, it is a reflection of the unchanging reality that we have more needs than resources.

The best commentary I have seen recently on this subject came in a newsletter from the business intelligence firm Stratfor - Diplomatic Security in Light of Benghazi:

So while it is understandable that the U.S. government would want to base diplomats and intelligence personnel in Benghazi [due to having important national interests there], it encountered a problem: It simply did not have a facility in the city that met security standards. Instead, the personnel had to occupy a temporary facility until a suitable building could be funded and then constructed. While the U.S. State Department has adopted a modular design program that has made this process a little easier, the construction of a new office building is nonetheless an expensive undertaking and something that the department cannot do under its current operating budget without the U.S. Congress allocating funds to pay for the construction project. Anyone who has dealt with the U.S. government should not be surprised, then, that the 11 months since the fall of the Gadhafi regime were not enough for Congress to fund, and the State Department to build, a new secure facility to house the consulate in Benghazi.

-- snip --

But the issue of temporary facilities is not just confined to Tripoli and Benghazi. It comes up frequently when there is a rapid change in a nation, or even in the case of a natural disaster. For example, the U.S. recognition of the new nation of South Sudan in July 2011 necessitated the rapid establishment of an embassy in the country's capital, Juba. If the environment continues to improve in Somalia, it is possible that the United States will increase its presence in Mogadishu, and establishing an embassy in Mogadishu will also pose a problem until a secure facility can be constructed.  ["Diplomatic Security in Light of Benghazi" is republished with permission of Stratfor.]

In a world of limited resources, not even the U.S. government can have everything it wants and it must make choices. Such as, should it build a new embassy in Juba before one in Mogadishu? And if it builds them both, which other two posts won't get new embassies because the money for them was spent on urgent unscheduled needs elsewhere? Someone in authority must decide. No business or government can afford to fully meet all of its needs, much less meet all of them at the same time, so priorities must be set.

The Department's Congressional budget justification for 2013 has this statement about prioritization in the section on "Effective and Efficient Risk-Based Security:"

DS is challenged more now than ever to provide security in environments where threats are increasing and implement the most cost-effective solutions within its current budget constraints. The locations require a more agile approach to provide resources beyond those outlined by the Overseas Security Policy Board (OSPB) standards when necessary, and quickly provide common-sense waiver and exception relief in situations that other OSPB standards cannot reasonably be met due to exigent circumstances in these locales. The Bureau will act on recommendations in the Secretary’s QDDR report to reassess the global standard for risk management. DS will assess its collective resources to formalize and house individual security programs developed to address the ever-changing threat. DS will make a concerted effort to call on the skills of its partner agencies in the design and implementation of joint security efforts. [Worldwide Security Protection, page 64]

That brings me to my next question about Fortress Embassies. How many more of them is the Department planning to build?

The above-linked budget justification for 2013 contains a section on "Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance" that addresses the Capital Security Construction program, which is the source of money for Fortresses. That program is the result of a recommendation in the report of the Accountability Review Board that convened after the East Africa embassy bombings in 1998 (here) whose key sentences read:

We must undertake a comprehensive and long-term strategy for protecting American officials overseas, including sustained funding for enhanced security measures, for long-term costs for increased security personnel, and for a capital building program based on an assessment of requirements to meet the new range of global terrorist threats. This must include substantial budgetary appropriations of approximately $1.4 billion per year maintained over an approximate ten-year period ... Additional funds for security must be obtained without diverting funds from our major foreign affairs programs.

It is now more than ten years later, and I see that the Department still has a capital building program based on security needs, so I have to hand it to Congress. They did indeed provide that sustained stream of new embassy construction money, as recommended.

According to the figures for "Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance" the Department has built 88 new overseas diplomatic facilities since 2001. From that, we may assume that the usual pace of construction has been around nine projects a year. The Department has 260-some embassies and consulates, so it will be quite some time before it gets around to them all at the present pace.

Moreover, the pace of new embassy construction seems to be slowing. Again according to the 2013 budget justification, the Department anticipated awarding six more contracts for new facilities in Fiscal Year 2012, and only three more in FY-2013.

Let's see ... if an average of nine projects per year have been awarded for the past ten years, but only six were awarded in the current year, and three are projected for next year ... Is it just me, or do you get the sense of a program winding down?

This will be something to watch when the Benghazi ARB makes its report. Will it recommend continuing the Capital Security Construction program as it is, or doubling down on its budget, or even ending it?

One last question about Fortress Embassies. How many more ought there to be?

It would be easy to say that Congress should increase funding beyond the 1.4 billion per year that was recommended in 1998. It would be easy, but overly optimistic.

The new construction recommendation made by the East Africa ARB in 1998 has been carried out. Maybe 88 or so new facilities is enough to meet the emergency needs that existed then, and it is now time to return the construction program to the non-emergency practices under which it operated before 2001.

Maybe it would be more useful to redirect that capital funding to hasty security upgrades for our many non-fortressy overseas facilities, the ones that three-quarters of our overseas staff currently occupy, rather than apply it to a handful of future new construction projects. There is a utilitarian argument that the best course of action is to do the greatest good for the greatest number, and that argument would seem to favor security upgrades over new construction. 

It's just as well that Ambassador Pickering will not be asking for my advice, since I'm not sure how I would respond.

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U.S. Consulate Herat Officially Opens

Deputy Secretary William J. Burns delivered the remarks at today's ceremony to open the new U.S. Consulate in Herat, Afghanistan:

And so we are here to celebrate the opening of the consulate -- this remarkable refurbished facility, leased from the Municipality of Herat. This was truly a community effort – we purchased local products to use in the refurbishment, some of which you can see on display in the waiting room next door. World-class quality, Chesht-e-Sharif marble now graces some of the floors. Every week, on average, more than 70 Afghans contributed their time and skills to the consulate’s construction. One expert carpenter turned plain packing crates into beautifully carved room dividers. And artwork produced by students from Herat University is displayed on the walls of the consulate.

That "remarkable refurbished facility" is not bad. Kudos to OBO.

As for the other remarkable refurbished facility in Afghanistan, the less said, the better.

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A Tale Of Two Consulates (Or, "Well, At Least Herat Wasn't Screwed Up")

Photo from Qavi Engineers Website

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It's been one full week since the WaPo disclosed the totally screwed-up minimally excellent conversion of the Mazar Hotel to serve as one of our two new U.S. Consulates in Afghanistan. The Mazar project was so very, very, minimally excellent that the building was rejected by Ambassador Crocker after the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) worked on it for three years and spent $80 million. (See more here).  

I am astonished by the lack of any particular public or Congressional outrage to that slow-motion train wreck of a building project. Maybe that outrage happened and I didn't notice it, or maybe we have become numb to costly fiascoes on the part of the government.    

In the For What It's Worth Department, I notice that the other new consulate acquisition and fit-out project in Afghanistan, the one that happened in Herat, appears to really have been excellent. That means OBO is 1-for-2, and that is something it could say in its defense, assuming some Oversight Committee ever wakes up and inquires.

How did Herat go so right? It looks like a combination of picking the right kind of property, and hiring the right kind of local contractor.

The site that OBO leased in Herat was formerly a hotel, the same as in Mazar. But this hotel is located on top of a hill in between two parks on the outskirts of the city, and has substantial distance between the building and the nearest road. Therefore, it avoids the problems that make the Mazar site so inherently vulnerable, i.e., uncontrolled buildings adjacent to our perimeter wall, near-by higher buildings and other overlooking points, and short setback. I could find out that information after a few minutes of searching on the term "Five-Star Hotel, Herat." 

The contractor that OBO used in Herat was one with a ten-year track record of successful performance on other U.S. government projects, according to its website.
 

This Project [the conversion of the Five-Star Hotel] was awarded after QEL’s outstanding performance at US Consulate, Lahore. The project was awarded on a “sole source” basis making QEL the first Pakistani Construction company to be awarded a sole sourced construction contract in a third country.

The contractor's website lists the project scope of work, which includes heavy-duty security upgrades such as a perimeter wall with guard towers, compound access control facilities, rated anti-ram vehicle barriers, inspection and screening areas, hard doors and windows, and a safe haven inside the office building.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of all that stuff personally, of course, but the website quotes the OBO Project Director saying complimentary things, and it has a photo of  a Certificate of Appreciation signed by the Consul General and Senior Civilian Representative, Western Afghanistan. They can refute it if it's false.

To misquote Dickens, "it was the best of projects, it was the worst of projects, it was the age of wise management, it was the age of foolish management, it was the epoch of good site-selection, it was the epoch of poor site-selection, it was the season of Care, it was the season of Carelessness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way if Congress ever makes us explain how this happened."

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Mazar-e-Sharif - The Mud, The Manure, And The Money

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[Note on Monday morning - The 'hover color' of the links is now back to a color that you can actually see. My apologies. While I am tempted to claim color-blindness, the truth is that I was careless while messing with the template several days ago, and I didn't notice that the links were no longer noticeable. And my links are important to me, since they are there to document the public availability of so many Matters of Official Concern.]

I'm having a pleasant weekend at home, getting my fly fishing gear ready for an outing next week, reading the excellent George Kennan biography (see the review by Henry Kissinger), and just generally lazing around. But the biggest reason why I'm having a pleasant weekend is that I am not the Director of the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) today.

As you may have read in the WaPo, the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan has declined to occupy the newly-completed interim consulate facility in Mazar-e-Sharif due to concerns about its poor security. It was newly completed by OBO. Completed at what the WaPo reports was a cost of $80 million. And now it's worthless.

As Domani Spero pointed out earlier today, that's a lot of money and wishful thinking down the drain, leaving behind a lot of good questions that now need to be answered.

The WaPo has a leaked memo, reportedly signed by the DCM in Kabul and dated this past January, which documents serious security deficiencies of the interim facility. The memo is reported to be "previously undisclosed" but the WaPo does not say that it is classified. I have seen nothing as of now that indicates the memo is classified, as opposed to just "leaked," therefore, it seems to be fair game for public comment by me.

I'll do a point-by-point reaction to the memo snippets that were quoted in the WaPo. But first, let's go to what will be the the most often commented upon feature of the interim facility. I refer, of course, to the manure.

"The structure’s outer perimeter wall is composed of sun-dried bricks made from mud, straw and manure, and the contractor used untreated timber for the roof, the memo says".

Now, bricks made of sun-dried mud, often with straw and manure added to the mix to reduce cracking, are usually known as "adobe." Adobe is a time-honored construction material. Some of the oldest structures in existence today were built with adobe. The bricks have excellent thermal properties. Plus, it's all 100% organic, locally-sourced, and produced by small entrepreneurs, so hippies ought to like it. No large corporations are involved in producing it, so Occupy Wall Street ought to embrace it.

Mud bricks drying

The interim facility already had a perimeter wall made of sun-dried mud bricks when OBO leased the place. It is not clear to me that it necessarily needed to be replaced with a wall made of something else, especially when the facility was to be a short-term fix. Perimeters can be upgraded by supplemental measures, anyway.

But forget it! "Mud and manure" makes the perfect laugh line for a Congressional oversight hearing.

The interim consular facility in Mazar was not constructed by OBO. It is a short-term leased property, the former Mazar Hotel. OBO's plan was to fit-out and refurbish the place as office and residential space for 37 'desk positions' plus support staff, in response to an urgent requirement from Special Envoy Holbrooke to establish a diplomatic presence in Northern Afghanistan. A permanent facility elsewhere in Mazar was to follow. (I take those details from a published official report on U.S. civilian uplift in Afghanistan.)

That is the kind of hasty acquisition and fit-out that OBO has done many times before. Waivers of security standards and public law (here) are almost always necessary in those situations, and the WaPo reports that it was necessary in Mazar. That alone is not particularly notable.

The embassy's key concerns with the finished product, as reported by the WaPo, are:

"The embassy memo says the facility was far from ideal from the start ... The space between the outer perimeter wall and buildings inside — a distance known as “setback” in war zone construction — was not up to U.S. diplomatic standards ... "

I am not surprised. The setback distance required by standards is 30 meters, as noted in many publicly available sources, including 12 FAM 300, and it is notoriously difficult to find an available existing urban property with that much setback.

"The complex was surrounded by several tall buildings from which an attack could easily be launched."

That one also leaves me unsurprised. Nearly any building in nearly any city will have taller buildings within the effective range of commonly available small arms, which is about 500 meters in the case of the RPG, for example.

"Among the corners cut in the interest of expediency, the memo says, was failing to assess how well the facility could withstand a car bombing, a task normally carried out by the department’s Bureau of Overseas Building Operations ... "

This strikes me as the most serious of the concerns reported. Sheer reality dictates that some security standards may have to be waived to inhabit a preexisting building, but how can we know whether we are accepting an unreasonable amount of risk for the employees posted in Mazar unless we have a clear idea of how large a bomb it would take to knock the building down?  

"We believe the survey will show that a [car bomb] would cause catastrophic failure of the building in light of the local construction techniques and materials,”[DCM] Kelly wrote. The structure’s outer perimeter wall is composed of sun-dried bricks made from mud, straw and manure, and the contractor used untreated timber for the roof, the memo says."

I'm not so sure. Maybe it would catastrophically fail, but not merely because the building is of local construction. Anyway, what basis does the DCM have for his belief it would collapse? How will we know unless a blast vulnerability study is conducted? Presumably, OBO will not conduct one now. Regarding the mud-and-manure perimeter wall, a perimeter wall has nothing to do with the structure of a separate building, so it really doesn't matter as regards blast survivability.  

"The entire compound is surrounded by buildings with overwatch and there is almost no space on the compound that cannot be watched, or fired upon, from an elevated position outside the compound”

As I said above, any city will have elevated positions outside the compound. A city in mountainous terrain, like Mazar, will have more of them than most.

And so, the first finger of blame has been pointed. Will OBO point one back?

OBO might have some cause. According to page 12 of this interview with a Foreign Service Officer who served in Mazar from December 2009 to June 2011 and helped to prepare for the opening of the Consulate, the post insisted on at least one expensive and time-consuming change to OBO's original plans.

Q. This one is not a hardened facility [referring to the interim consulate in the Mazar Hotel]? I thought that’s how we build these things.

A. This is a temporary facility and it is being constructed with a number of security construction waivers. It meets the minimum security requirements and in fact we had several visits by OBO (State Department Overseas Buildings Office) leadership and one of the reasons for the delay in the project is, it was decided to replace all of the 104 windows in the facility with the 15 minute FEBR (Force Ballistic Resistant) windows rather than a locally constructed compromise, which would have been five minute windows. By the time that these were ordered, manufactured, air freighted, and installed, the project was set back four to five months.

That many security windows would cost a good chunk of change, and installing them in a preexisting building might cause even more expensive building structural complications. Was that a reasonable change to make for a temporary building? I can't say, but, it is exactly the kind of thing that OBO might cite in its own defense.  

This promises to get good. I mean, it does for those of us who don't work in OBO or Mazar.

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U.S. Embassy In The Netherlands Will Be Replaced

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The State Department sent out a solicitation for construction of a new U.S. Embassy in The Netherlands today. The synopsis reads:

THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE (DOS), Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) is requesting submissions to pre-qualify firms for Construction services for the construction of a New Embassy Compound (NEC). This project will be executed under OBO's Design Excellence Program [program details here]. The project will consist of the construction of a compound to house U.S. Diplomatic functions at [The Hague, The Netherlands].

The solicitation estimates the construction cost to be between $170 million and $210 million. That  estimate is for construction costs alone, since the design is already completed. Pricey, but then, this will be an Excellent Embassy, and you don't find them in a discount bin.

To put the cost in context, it is less than half as much money as our new Ambassador-nominee to The Netherlands personally raised for President Obama's reelection campaign.

The current embassy office building was designed by the noted Modernist architect Marcel Breuer, which makes it a property of cultural significance. What will be done with that building once the new embassy is up?

The Dutch authorities, and appreciators of Modernism, have a few ideas about that:

In the area of historic preservation, the solitary Modern Movement building has always posed a problem for our field. An “oddity”, debate surrounds a perceived mismatch between Modern Architecture and their historical surroundings of ornamented 18th-19th century architecture. This is also the case with the American Embassy in The Hague, the Netherlands. The embassy was designed by Marcel Breuer from 1957-1959. Since the Gulf War, and especially after 9/11, the embassy became a defensive, "attack proof" building, heavily guarded by high fences and permanent police protections. It is expected that in the near future, the American embassy will leave Breuer's building and move to a new, more easily protected location.

These recent developments have stirred up several public debates about the embassy’s future. Some have argued for demolition, a sentiment that seems to be dictated by the current inaccessible character of the embassy. Others have opted for preservation, ranging from restoring it to its original state, to reuse in an adapted form. At the moment, current public opinion supports the preservation of Breuer’s building as an opportunity to celebrate this icon and research its possibilities for transformation. The Alderman for Culture of The Hague holds a corresponding view, and has announced a desire to investigate the possibility of conversion into a design hotel and museum for the 2018 event entitled: The Hague - Cultural Capital of Europe. It seems that even an iconic MoMo building like Breuer’s American Embassy at The Hague will have to face the 10th International Docomomo Conference mantra: “The Challenge of Change.”

"Docomomo" is an international non-profit organization dedicated to the documentation and conservation of buildings of the modernist movement.

I looked up some photos of the U.S. embassy in The Hague, and they show the progression of physical security measures that have been installed over time. 

Early 1960s

First and foremost, you see how the building sits right on the street. Completely accessible. There is almost zero setback distance between the building and those great 60s cars that are parked just a few feet away. Carbombs were not a concern back then, obviously.

Security aside, I rather like the design. Modernism wasn't decorative, and many people find the buildings ugly. But still, those are some clever window details. It reminds me of the many 1930s and 40s office buildings you see in Washington, and that seems an appropriate look for a U.S. embassy.    

Around 1980, I would guess

A wire fence and some low parking bollards - those little black metal posts - were added to the sidewalk in front of the embassy at some point after the 1960s. That provided a little bit of access control, probably by channeling visitors to a screening point.

Current Conditions

In the current photos the wire fence has been replaced by a taller metal picket fence that would be harder for a mob to push down or climb over, and the bollards seem to have been replaced with stronger (higher, larger diameter, and more closely spaced) ones.

Current Conditions

 












The perimeter has also been supplemented with an elevated guard booth.

But the booth doesn't really matter, and neither do the fence and bollards. Given the fundamental lack of setback distance, there is nothing the USG could ever do with that building to make it reasonably well-protected against terrorism.  

The new embassy will be in a more remote location where it can be much better protected. But, what will it look like?

Here's an artist's rendering, which I found in a publicly available Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations briefing to industry.

New Embassy Project, artist's rendering

We gain in security, I'm sure, but we lose something in character.

Except for the Great Seal, that looks like any of a thousand community colleges. Or the FSI campus, if enough geese collect around that pond.

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A Kind Word For Fortress Embassies, From A Surprising Source

The Washington Diplomat had an article on embassy architecture versus security the other day (America’s Embassy Building Boom Fortifies Diplomacy, Security Abroad), which I thought was only mildly interesting until I got to the obligatory quote from Jane Loeffler. She is our foremost - only? - historian of diplomatic architecture, and premier critic of Fortress Embassies, and no article on the subject would be complete without her remarks.

Normally in an article of this sort, Dr. Loeffler provides unrelenting criticism of defensive embassy architecture, and then it's left to some poor Department spokesman or project architect to put up a weak rebuttal about the need for security. But this time, Dr. Loeffler played for the other team. After others had made the customary attacks, she had the concluding statement:  

The 2012 fiscal year budget for new construction is about $1 billion. So why should taxpayers support the construction of secure new embassies in low-threat countries like Latvia or Malta?

"People shouldn't have to work in high-risk situations doing such important work for our country," Loeffler said. "Diplomacy is our most important initiative and it's so much less expensive than war. We need to make the buildings attractive and functional, but they're also targets so they need to be secure."

"People shouldn't have to work in high-risk situations doing such important work for our country." Damn straight. I will add that the risks of terrorism can be high even in purportedly low-threat countries such as Latvia and Malta. For example, that new secure embassy in Malta replaced one that was located inside a multi-tenant commercial office building, a type of property in which it would never have been able to achieve satisfactory security.

If we are serious about moving our people out of high-risk situations and into better and more secure buildings, then our new embassies will inevitably have to have certain fortress-y characteristics. I'm not saying we need to go medieval and do the whole castle-on-an-island, but our embassies will need features such as setback distance from surrounding streets if they are to be reasonably well-protected against physical attack.

That is why I am 100 percent in agreement with the new Design Excellence initiative for new embassies. I say, turn the architects loose to do what they do best, which is to satisfy the client's needs in a better way than the client himself is capable of imagining.

Incidentally, you can see what the old not-so-excellent embassy construction program created over the past ten years by checking out these architectural mugshots that the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations has made publicly accessible for your information.

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OBO's Excellent (Design) Adventure

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The Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) has made its first official departure from the architectural diplo-kitsch of the Standard Embassy Design, and intends to replace the old U.S. Embassy in Mexico City (pictured above) with a bespoke masterpiece from the new Design Excellence program. All details about that masterpiece are still to be determined, so we'll have to trust OBO on that for now.

OBO announced the opening of a design competition for the Mexico City job on Friday:

The Department of State’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) has shortlisted nine design teams for the New Embassy Compound in Mexico City, Mexico.

The shortlisted teams, in no particular order, are:

AECOM/Snohetta
Allied Works Architecture
Antoine Predock Architect / Moody-Nolan
Diller Scofidio + Renfro / Buro Happhold
Ennead Architects
Miller Hull Partnership
Morphosis Architects
Skidmore Owings and Merrill
Tod Williams/Billie Tsien Architects

Fifty-four firms responded to the public notification for prospective offerors [see it here] to compete. This initial shortlist of offerors will assemble their technical teams and submit detailed information on their organization and qualifications.

The Mexico City design/bid/build project, scheduled for construction award in fiscal year 2015, is the first solicited under OBO’s new Design Excellence program. This holistic approach to project development and delivery seeks to utilize the best methods, technologies, and staff abilities to produce facilities that are outstanding in all respects. The overall strategy focuses on the integration of purpose, function, flexibility, art, safety, security, sustainability, and maintainability.

That last sentence reads like it came straight out of an architectural charrette, which I'm sure it did. So, our project strategy will be to holistically integrate "purpose, function, flexibility, art, safety, security, sustainability, and maintainability" into a new office building. All that into the same building. Okay, but I think reality will set in at some point and OBO will need to make some unwanted trade-offs.

For starters, where in the enormous and densely-packed megalopolis of Mexico City is there a site that is large enough to build an Excellent Embassy on, but also close enough to the downtown business district and host government core to be highly functional for clients and embassy officers? That's trade-off Number 1 right there.

And there will be a trade-off on the program level, as well. An Excellent Embassy is going to cost more than a standard embassy design when all is said and done - yes, it will, despite the Design Excellence program stuff about higher first costs leading to lower life-cycle costs - and that means an old embassy at some less important post will not get replaced. OBO will choose to do one high-toned new building instead of two inelegant boxes.  

Regarding the design competition, I'm guessing that Skidmore Owings & Merrill has the inside track. SOM designed the new U.S. Embassy in Beijing, which was the second-largest overseas construction project ever undertaken by OBO and a Design Excellence project in all but name (see this for details), and also the late-1990s new U.S. Embassy in Ottawa. The Ottawa design was extremely un-fortressy, maybe too much so even for an embassy in Canada.

All reservations aside, I am looking forward to seeing how this excellent adventure turns out. If nothing else, it will be a refreshing change from the heavily standardized and regimented era of Major General (ret.) Charles C. Williams, Director and Chief Operating Officer, OBO, March 2001 to December 2007.

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New Embassy Compound In Kyiv

Twenty years ago the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was starting to break up into sixteen successor states ("the Union of Fewer and Fewer Republics"), which made for exciting times. One immediate consequence of the collapse of the USSR was that the other nations of the world had to very quickly set up diplomatic premises in the newly independent states, which were hyper-eager to receive them, since a foreign diplomatic presence would help to solidify their new status.

Problem was, almost all the available office properties back then were the ones being vacated by Soviet government agencies or the Soviet Communist Party. That was not good, since a former KGB headquarters would make a poor U.S. Embassy, for reasons of symbolism as well as practical considerations about eavesdropping devices. There would be bad ju-ju if our diplomats worked in buildings where dissidents had been tortured or killed.

In Kyiv, the solution was to acquire the former headquarters of the Komsomol - the Communist Party Youth League - as a stop-gap solution until a larger and more suitable place could be found. I remember everyone figured that we would move into a new embassy office building in two or three years, five years at the outside.

Today, after twenty years in the old Komsomol building, the U.S. mission finally moved into that new embassy compound.

United States Dedicates New Embassy Compound in Kyiv, Ukraine:

Following the 20th Anniversary of American-Ukrainian diplomatic relations celebrated on January 20, U.S. Ambassador John F. Tefft dedicated the new embassy facility in Kyiv today. Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament, Volodomyr Lytvyn; Foreign Minister, Kostyantyn Gryshchenko; as well as Under Secretary for Management, Patrick F. Kennedy; Deputy Chief of Mission, Eric Schultz; and Deputy Director of the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO), Heather Townsend participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Occupying a 10-acre site in the capital city of Kyiv, the multi-building complex is a platform for increased U.S. interaction with the Ukrainian people. The embassy’s permanent art collection celebrates the exchange of artistic expression between the United States and Ukraine through work by contemporary Ukrainian, American, and regional artists, curated by OBO’s Office of Art in Embassies.

The new embassy incorporates numerous sustainable features, most notably advances in engineering design to maximize efficiency and minimize energy use, a green roof system, and rain gardens which pre-treat stormwater before it is infiltrated on-site. The compound is registered with the Green Building Certification Institute and is entering the formal review process; it is the first LEED® registered project in Ukraine. B.L. Harbert International of Birmingham, Ala., constructed the project, which was designed by Page Southerland Page of Arlington, Va. The $247 million project generated hundreds of jobs in both the United States and Ukraine.

Since 1999, as part of the Department’s Capital Security Construction Program, OBO has completed 88 new diplomatic facilities and has moved more than 27,000 people into safe, secure, and functional facilities. OBO has an additional 41 projects in design or construction.

By the way, the new compound in Kyiv was built on the site of what had formerly been a huge junkyard. No bad ju-ju there.

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The Newest Fortress In Malta

The new U.S. embassy in Malta might possibly pose a dilemma for art critics of the Standard Embassy Design. How do you complain that the new embassy looks like a fortress when the nation it's in is famous for its many historic fortresses? Maybe this time we aren't isolating our mission and 'expressing fear' (and so on) with our defensive architecture. Maybe we're really making an architectural reference to local history and culture?

I mean, the Maltese have been perfecting the art of building fortresses at least as far back as the 16th century, so they ought to the world's leading connoisseurs of the form. I bet the average embassy visitor there can appreciate a good perimeter wall, and will have an enjoyable aesthetic experience while he waits for his visa interview. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

United States Dedicates New Embassy Compound in Valletta, Malta:

Reflecting the importance of the United States’ diplomatic relationship with Malta, Chargé Richard M. Mills, Jr. dedicated the new United States Embassy facility in Valletta today. Malta’s President, George Abela; Prime Minister, Lawrence Gonzi; and Office Director of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO), Patrick McNamara, participated in the ribbon cutting ceremony.

The new Embassy facility, located in the Ta’Qali neighborhood of Attard near Ta’Qali National Park, was designed to incorporate green building techniques and to meet the principles of the U.S. Green Building Council for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) green building rating system. The multi-building complex provides more than 125 U.S. embassy employees, both American and Maltese, with state-of-the-art work space that features a collection of contemporary Maltese, American, and Maltese-American art, curated by the Office of Art in Embassies.

A.I.C.I-SP of Arlington, Virginia constructed the facility, which was designed by the architectural firm Karn Charuhas Chapman Twohey (KCCT) of Washington, D.C. The $125 million project generated jobs in both the United States and Malta. The new facility was completed in May 2011 and, at times, involved more than 800 workers in its construction.

Since the 1999 enactment of the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act, the Department has moved more than 24,000 people into safer facilities. Including the new Embassy in Malta, OBO has completed 82 diplomatic facilities and has an additional 35 projects in design or construction.

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