The Architecture of Diplomacy:
Building America’s Embassies
Endorsements
The first endorsements for The Architecture of Diplomacy were the blurbs on its back cover. It was not hard to get Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan to endorse the book because he believed so strongly in the importance of good design for federal architecture. He called specific attention to the book in his remarks to the “Balancing Security and Openness” Symposium sponsored by the GSA and the State Department in 1999. But before that, he wrote this blurb for the book jacket:
The Architecture of Diplomacy is a splendidly presented treatise on both subjects. Which is to say diplomacy as well as architecture. Beginning in the 1950s, as new nations came into being across the globe, the United States built new embassies designed as statements of recognition and welcome. Almost invariably, the new countries began as democracies, and our new buildings were intended to express the achievement and accomplishment of American democracy. As much as modernism can do, was done. If many of these buildings now stand as a reproach to existing regimes, so be it. The State Department planners of the 1950s built better than they knew!
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
U.S. Ambassador to India, 1973-75;
Honorary Member, AIA
Also on book cover:
This excellent book could not appear at a more important and timely moment, when the United States faces the dual challenge of building embassies around the world that are constructed as fortified defenses against terrorism and still meant to convey the symbolic values of American democracy. The addition and appraisal of current designs that update the book’s earlier history of embassy architecture define the dilemma and highlight the need for better solutions.
Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture critic,
The Wall Street Journal [2010] This text appeared as a blurb on the cover of the second edition.
What do we, as a nation, mean to say to the world? Jane C. Loeffler shrewdly looks for answers in a crucial yet neglected place: the architecture of America’s embassies. There is no more political act than building an embassy, and no more architecturally complicated one. From the petty jealousies on Capitol Hill to the fine points of modernist design, Loeffler’s effortlessly erudite and highly readable account explains how our government has tried-with mixed success-to represent us abroad in steel and stone.
Howard Fineman,
Chief Political Correspondent, Newsweek and Analyst, NBC News [1998]
This lucid, thoroughly researched and highly original book is strongly recommended to students of diplomacy. It not only explains the political and (even more interesting) economic background to the vast expansion in US embassy building after World War 2 but raises the important question of the extent to which embassy architecture (and location) can support diplomacy while preserving the security of diplomats, evidently something which is not easy to accomplish.
G. R. Berridge,
Professor of International Politics, University of Leicester, UK [1999]
The recent bombings in Kenya and Tanzania have endowed this conscientious, illuminating study of the State Department’s Cold War building boom with unfortunate topicality. Competing with the Russians, who stuck with Stalinist structures, the Americans opted for modernism; consequently, the book’s illustrations are a somewhat damning panorama of yesterday’s avant-garde. Since the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, however, art has taken second place to security.
The New Yorker [Sept. 7, 1998]
Loeffler’s book is a very good read and tells a fascinating story: how US architects benefited from the way that modern architecture was used by their government to counter the pseudo-classicism of Stalin and Russia’s satellites… In fact, virtually every name you can think of in the modern American movement is there: Saarinen, Gropius, Breuer…
Richard Burton,
ABK Architects (UK) [1999]
I have had the good fortune to meet Ms. Loeffler, to hear her speak on this subject, to be involved in designing embassies, studying embassies, and also in reading this spectacular history…Although all countries have embassies, a United States embassy is a special kind of building. Ms. Loeffler takes us all around the world and across over a century of time exploring how the US Embassies have developed and evolved over the years. The most interesting portions of the book are in the post World War II period to the early 1960′s…We read of the growth of the embassy program and the contribution of important American architects. We learn of the endeavors of FBO to create a world-class image for America through our embassies. We learn of the challenges of designing for terrorism. Good Book.
Gregory Knoop,
Oudens + Knoop Architects (US) on Amazon [Apr., 2005]
Many writers have written about my husband, Edward Durell Stone who died in 1978. The writing here by Jane C. Loeffler about Mr. Stone is accurate, something many writers have ignored. The truth is highly important when speaking of an individual who was a creative giant. The cover of The Architecture of Diplomacy features Edward’s embassy building in New Delhi, India. Without a doubt is has been considered the most beautiful of all the embassies built in that era. Frank Lloyd Wright praised it calling it ‘The Taj Maria’. I am complimented…Jane’s book brought back graceful memories. I thank her.
Maria Durell Stone
on Amazon [July, 2010]
I graduated in May with a Master of Architecture degree. My thesis was examining American embassy building typology and over the course of the year I exhausted nearly every written resource I could find on the topic. This book continually kept me genuinely captivated in the whole history. I was often amazed at how many determining factors she would be able to comprehensibly discuss: World politics, American politics, American agendas, architectural politics, cultural considerations, authoritative demands, Howard Roarks, counter-sustainable building practices… the list goes on. While I used this book as an insight into a more holistic history of the typology, I would also recommend it as simply a really good read. If you’re interested in the topic definitely pick this one up.
the rocket surgeon
on Amazon [October 21, 2011]
Jane Loeffler’s precise, beautifully written book about America’s most important overseas buildings is a joy to read. Anyone who likes architecture, history, politics … or even vaudeville (see the part about Sol Bloom) … will devour Architecture of Diplomacy. We project our values and, in some ways, our national mood via the embassies and consulates we construct; I feel fortunate to have found Loeffler’s book to explain it all to me so engagingly. Brava.
CK13
on Amazon [February 2019]
Reviews
“The Architecture of Diplomacy reads like a Washington political thriller,” Philip Nobel wrote in METROPOLIS in August, 1998. That was the book’s first published review. Reviews followed in numerous publications—academic/scholarly, professional, popular…even literary. Excerpts from published reviews include these:
In The Architecture of Diplomacy Jane Loeffler has produced an original study on the building of American embassies, consulates and residences. This will not only appeal to historians of twentieth-century American architecture but, for the diplomatic historian, there is concrete evidence of America’s relationships with other countries. Loeffler’s thorough account, based primarily on archival sources, provides evidence of the development of a projection of image abroad of the twentieth century’s most powerful state through building projects that were tied to both domestic politics and international affairs. The choice and availability of sites, the financing of building projects overseas, an ever complex array of functional and symbolic requirements in embassy buildings and, increasingly, security issues, are considered… this is a refreshing attempt to place the building of American embassies in the context of American foreign and domestic policy.
Melanie Hall, Boston University, in Diplomacy and Statecraft
[Nov. 2000]
It is a happy coincidence when the right author deals with the right subject. The author, Jane C. Loeffler…is well qualified to undertake the extensive research necessary for such a study. And the subject–the evolution of architectural policy and practice in the construction of the several hundred offices and living quarters since World War II–is difficult, complicated, and important. Loeffler’s extensive research in State Department documents, congressional hearings, periodical publications, and biographic materials has resulted in a remarkably rich narrative that gives full scope to the various views of the participants. She is also not afraid to express her own opinion on the various personalities and problems.
Loeffler has covered this complex history…with great care, considerable sympathy, and remarkable understanding. Her judgments on men and buildings are sound. As she indicates in her conclusion, she regards this book as a pioneer in its field. And she has every right to consider it a formidable basis for future scholarship.
Fred Latimer Hadsel, United States Ambassador, Retired, in The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
[Jun. 2000]
The worst public building in any American town is almost certain to have been built in the 1950s…Yet the fifties were the decade when, as Jane C Loeffler’s engaging and important book describes, the United States government began a conscious program of constructing embassies abroad designed as statements about America and as messages to other nations, particularly the newly-emerging states of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The United States was becoming aware of itself as the “leader of the free world” and, engaged in the bitter cold war contest with the Soviet Union, recognized architecture’s potential as a dramatic way to demonstrate that America as a superpower not only was rich and strong, but also creative, friendly, and open to others.
Running through Loeffler’s book is the thread of an American epic spanning the decades from innocent confidence to brash imperiousness to today’s reluctant and wary acceptance of the responsibilities of leadership. The epic is not ended. Decisions about its next chapter will have to be made soon if the future is not to be largely left in the hands of some uncertain fate… Like the stock market, architecture seems able to anticipate societal change, and so warrants careful watching…But if architecture is a leading indicator, then American diplomacy today is deteriorating and withdrawing. Loeffler’s book is an indispensable contribution to understanding our current diplomatic problems and an invitation to think seriously about how to solve them.
Charles Hill, Yale University, in American Studies International
[Feb. 1999]
Insightful and meticulously researched, this fascinating history of America’s embassy-building program is filled with stories of international intrigue and bureaucratic snarls. Beginning with the dawn of the Cold War, Loeffler explores the forces and challenges—political, financial, social, symbolic—that affect such projects… Building an embassy is a supremely complicated feat, this book ably shows, one requiring as much diplomacy as design.
Christine Liotta Sheridan in Architectural Record
[Jan. 1999]
Loeffler’s timely text gives the reader a view of the interplay between Congress and the executive branch, while it highlights the role of powerful personalities and the importance of design… her narrative captures the program’s path to the crossroads of security needs and financial constraints at which it currently stands.
Mary Lynn Jones in Wellesley Magazine
[Spring, 1999]
This book covers a neglected chapter of American architectural history, the history of American embassies around the world, from the earliest beginnings in the 19th century to the present effort to build in the new capital city of Berlin. The author is an accomplished historian, and she has written a fascinating, readable, and scholarly chronicle…For all architecture collections in larger public as well as academic libraries.
Peter S. Kaufman, Boston Architectural Center, in Library Journal
[Aug. 1998]
Jane C Loeffler’s clearheaded study uncovers the sometimes petty politics, both governmental and architectural, that have plagued US diplomatic design… Leading lights dim in Loeffler’s steely analysis…And so it remains to be seen how seriously the US regards the once valued notion that architecture might ably represent its interests and ideals abroad.
Chuck Twardy in World Architecture
[Dec., 1998/Jan., 1999]
The first comprehensive history of American embassy design reads more like a political thriller. The first publication of Jane C. Loeffler’s research into the design of American embassies, a September 1990 article in The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, was greeted with considerable excitement in that circle. The postwar embassy building program—with its precocious embrace of Modern architecture as a symbol of democracy, its scenic entanglement in Cold War machinations, and its value as a case study of government patronage—was widely understood to be a complex, fascinating, and under-examined episode in the larger story of the institutionalization of Modern architecture in the United States. Many of the individual buildings were well known (some, like Edward Durell Stone’s 1957 embassy in New Delhi, were overexposed from the first sketch), but until Loeffler’s 1990 article, no one had tried to paint the bigger picture.
Now, with the publication of The Architecture of Diplomacy, that picture is complete. Loeffler seems to have infiltrated the State Department at every level to find the political, social, stylistic, and financial forces that shaped each embassy building. All buildings come into being at the behest of such influences, but here the situation is extreme: architects and the politicians who directed them had to balance programmatic, symbolic, functional, budgetary, and public opinion concerns for multiple audiences in the United States and each host country.
Philip Nobel in METROPOLIS
[Aug./Sept. 1998]
Clarifiant empiriquement les stratégies politiques et les processus de décision qui influent sur l’architecture, Jane C. Loeffler se garde d’envelopper I’édifice dans une aura d’indépendance symbolique, tout en dégageant les grands thêmes de réflexion relatifs à la recherche d’une image architecturale apte à symboliser une nation. En dépit de la condamnation officielle de l’art contemporain sur son propre sol, c’est par le modernisme que les États-Unis choisissent de traduire pour le monde, entre 1946 et 1954, leur message de liberté.
Ariane Wilson in L’Architecture D’Aujourd’hui
[Mar./Apr. 2001]
Recent bombings of American embassies in Africa have heightened awareness of the need to protect our overseas buildings from terrorist attack. The eerie coincidence of these bombings with the publication of Jane C. Loeffler’s “The Architecture of Diplomacy” makes the book that much more topical and interesting.
Ellen D. Sands in The Washington Times
[Sept. 2, 1998]
See more reviews in Abitare (Italy) [Feb. 1999];
Der Tagesspiegel (Germany) [Nov. 1998];
Oriental Morning Post (Shanghai, PRC) [July 30, 2008]
Errata
Suffice it to say, authors are their own editors these days. But they still do not control the production process. Trying to respond to the changing marketplace for books, Princeton Architectural Press attempted to produce the second revised edition of The Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America’s Embassies using new technology. Inadvertently, the wrong index was inserted into the first books in the paperback edition published in 2010. A copy of the proper index is available here: for anyone who received a book from the first run (subsequently recalled and now a collector’s item). Thanks largely to the subvention made possible by the generosity of the Delavan Foundation, PAP republished the book with the proper index in 2011. JCL/ArchDip GOOD Index copy.pdf
ERRATA in the 2011 revised second edition:
1) The photograph in Fig. 10 (in the book) is supposed to show the main entrance to the U.S. Embassy (office building) in Paris (at left), but a photo of the garden entrance to the residence in Paris was substituted instead.
The garden entrance to the residence is shown on the following page in Fig. 15.
Figure 1: U.S. Embassy, Paris, France, designed by Delano & Aldrich (FBO)
2) Information in the second paragraph on Page 24 should be corrected to read: The Department purchased a handsome villa in Oslo in 1924, for example (fig. 3). Built in 1911 by former Norwegian Consul General Hans Olsen and his wife Mina Nobel Olsen (niece of Alfred Nobel), the villa was designed by noted Norwegian national romantic architect Henrik Bull.
Figure 2: U.S. Ambassador’s Residence, Oslo, Norway (Villa Otium) in 2011 (Ambassador’s Residence, Oslo, R. Loeffler)
(For more information on the history of that property, known as Villa Otium, see the entire book recently published by Embassy Oslo: 2012 BOOK Villa Otium A Diplomatic Home.
