KieranTimberlake to design new U.S. Embassy in London

By The Post's architecture critic and correspondent Philip Kennicott:

The State Department has announced that a Philadelphia-based architecture firm has won the closely watched competition to design the new U.S. Embassy in London. KieranTimberlake, which also designed an innovative and environmentally sustainable structure for Washington's Sidwell Friends School, beat out three other major architectural firms. The decision was announced in London at 4:30 p.m. GMT.

The design calls for a secure and environmentally efficient glass cube set atop a colonnade in a landscape with a pond and pathways open to the public. Speaking from London, architect James Timberlake called it "an urban building in an urban park."

The other finalists, in a process that began with 37 entrants and was winnowed to four over the course of the past year and a half, were Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, Morphosis Architects and Richard Meier & Partners.

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