The new US Embassy at 33 Nine Elms Lane in London opened for visa appointments earlier this month. Embassy staff helpfully shared a short video of a walk through for how a typical visa applicant will enter the Embassy to attend the appointment. After security at the South Pavilion, a separate structure on embassy grounds, visitors will walk to the main Embassy building, the most environmentally friendly and most secure US Embassy ever built. In the video, embassy staff remind visitors that while they can have a cell phone or small tablet, laptops and luggage are not permitted. Also, they say, don't forget your passport and confirmation page for the visa appointment as well as supporting documents. Inside the main building, after getting a ticket at the kiosk, visitors will take the elevator up to the waiting room where they will wait for their number to be called. When called, visitors will present their paperwork to consular officers at the (semi-private) teller windows. Oh yeah, one last thing: don't forget your passport!
The Guardian: “Qatar wins approval to turn US embassy in London into hotel”
US Embassy London. Photo by CGP Grey.
The US Embassy in London will be turned into a luxury hotel after the Qatari royal family’s property company has won approval from Westminster council. In 2009, the US State Department agreed to sell this historic building—topped by a gilded bald eagle with a wingspan of more than 36 feet and designed by the Finnish-American modernist Eero Saarinen—to Qatari Diar to fund the construction of the new US Embassy in Nine Elms south of the Thames. The current Embassy (soon-to-be-hotel) is located in pricey Grosvenor Square, which has housed the US Embassy since 1938, where during World War II the square was known as Little America as General Eisenhower’s headquarters and other US operations were based there. The nine floors (three underground) of the building—valued at £500m—will include up to 137 hotel rooms, shops, restaurants, and bars.
The Embassy’s move to the new location from Grosvenor Square is a relief to many neighbors and local residents who have protested against the current Embassy’s location because of safety and security concerns. The site historically has been a place for demonstrations and protests over the years, including famously in March 1968, when 10,000 demonstrators protested the Vietnam war, leading to 200 arrests and fifty people treated in the hospital, and, recently, protests against the election of Donald Trump.
The new Embassy, however, opening near Battersea power station in South London is facing construction delays. Originally scheduled to finish in late 2016 during President Obama’s term, the Embassy will not open until after Trump is inaugurated in January. Heightened security checks on workers and materials have delayed the eleven-story cube-shaped building, an anonymous source tells Bloomberg. A spokeswoman for the US Embassy tells Bloomberg via email that these are standard construction delays, and that the project budget includes such a contingency. The Embassy is now scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2017.
In other State Department news, a counterfeit US Embassy was shut down in Ghana after having operated for ten years. The Embassy, with an American flag and photograph of President Obama, was operated by figures in Ghanaian and Turkish organized crime rings as well as a local attorney. It allegedly issued visas, some of them were genuine, as well as false identification documents for a cost of $6,000. Embassy officials, together with Ghanaian police, seized 150 passports from ten countries, including legitimate and counterfeit visas from the US, the Schengen zone, India, and South Africa. A State Department official says that nobody was able to travel to the US on the fake visas.
All Visa Appointments at the US Embassy in London Are Cancelled October 28
The US Embassy in London have cancelled all the visa appointments and visa processing today (October 28, 2015) due to a “local systems” malfunction. We first received reports this morning that the Embassy sent all applicants home and told them that there would be no appointments today. At the time Embassy staff said that they would either call or email applicants to reschedule the appointments, and the Embassy has now again confirmed on their Twitter feed that all applicants would be contacted by the Visa Appointment Service for appointment rescheduling. The Embassy’s Twitter feed also confirms that the technological systems failure was localized at the London Embassy (compared to the recent global shutdown) and that the Embassy is “confident systems will be fully operational tomorrow.”
New York Times: "With Move Across London, U.S. Embassy Can’t Please Everyone"
The new US Embassy in London under construction. (Photo by US Embassy London used under Creative Commons.)
The US Embassy in London is moving locations, and not everyone is happy about it. After years of criticism and protests by local residents against the current Embassy building in Grosvenor Square because of safety and security concerns—the protests included a hunger strike by a countess—the US Embassy is moving from its Modernist concrete building in beautiful, historic, and exclusive Mayfair, where the Embassy has been based since 1960, to a more protected and environmentally responsible building in the gritty district of Nine Elms on the South Bank of the Thames. While the move planned for 2017 is welcomed by local Mayfair residents who for years have feared terrorist attacks, the new location also has its own critics.
The new building was designed by Philadelphia firm KieranTimberlake to reflect "the core values of democracy—transparency, openness, and equality" and also to be "welcoming, secure, and highly sustainable." The design, however, has been called "boring," a "corporate office block," and "the Ice Cube." Former Guardian architecture critic Jonathan Glancey said that the proposed building is "remote and superficially transparent" and that it reflects "what we can divine of the US political process. Nominally open to all and yet, in practice, tightly controlled[.]"
Peter Rees, the City of London’s former head of planning, wrote in an email to the New York Times: “It seems sad that the U.S. Embassy is relocating from a beautiful historic square in Mayfair to a fortified bunker in former railyards on the far side of the river...It’s like moving from New York’s Upper East Side to New Jersey.”
Ambassador Robert Tuttle, who led the search for a new site, said on the London Embassy website: “We looked at all our options, including renovation of our current building on Grosvenor Square. In the end, we realized that the goal of a modern, secure and environmentally sustainable Embassy could best be met by constructing a new facility.”
As the New York Times said when the original building design was chosen:
The project as a whole...is a fascinating study in how architecture can be used as a form of camouflage. The building is set in a spiraling pattern of two small meadows and a pond that have as much to do with defensive fortification as with pastoral serenity: an eye-opening expression of the irresolvable tensions involved in trying to design an emblem of American values when you know it may become the next terrorist target.
No word if Gould Pharmacy, which rents lockers for applicants who cannot bring their large electronic items into the Embassy, will also open a new location. It might be finally time to leave those large electronics at home.