Photos by Smita Daryanani

This year marks seventy years since Queen Elizabeth II took the throne, making her the first British Monarch in history to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee. The Jubilee celebrations, will include many events across the country including the Trooping of the Color followed by a Flypast, the Derby at Epsom Downs, Platinum Jubilee Beacons, a party at Buckingham palace, street parties all over the country, and a Pageant on Sunday to end the weekend. As part of the celebrations, and given the Queen’s love of corgis, a trail of larger-than-life corgi statues has been set up in London. Nineteen statues, each designed and decorated by a different contemporary artist, are eye-catching additions to the streets of central London around Buckingham Palace.

The US Embassy building in London is a remarkable landmark, with a design that combines utility, security, and sustainability with a striking appearance, inside and out. Opened in 2017, the building is relatively new. The design, by Philadelphia-based architecture firm Kieran Timberlake, is meant to evoke some of the foundational ideals of American government – transparency, openness, and equality. The building’s simple cube shape maximizes useable space in a high-traffic embassy, and the façade made of transparent, high-performance plastic catches the sunlight in an appealing and useful way, directing the natural light throughout the interior of the building. The outside of the building also boasts a landscaped pond that serves double duty as an attractive aesthetic feature and a rainwater retention system, reducing strain on the municipal water system and pollution of the nearby Thames River by repurposing collected water for irrigation and mechanical systems. The inside of the building is equally well designed, featuring indoor gardens and countless works of art, including an enormous mural created with the words in the US Constitution.