The Foreign Service Journal, December 2012

Widening the pool of designers and builders willing and able to compete for this work is a good thing, but it overlooks the value of experience. Moreover, getting buy-in from leaders across the political spectrum is quite another matter. The same is true for users, ranging from State Department diplomats, who may want to be more accessible, to detailed employees from an array of government agencies, who may not. Susan Johnson, president of the American Foreign Service Association, represents many users and personally applauds the new program. A career diplomat who has served in such chal- lenging security environments such as Iraq, Bosnia and Herze- govina, Mauritius and Russia, she agrees that fortress embassies have “impaired the conduct of diplomacy” in many places. An embassy is often the first and only contact with America, Johnson notes, so its message carries particular impact. While there are locales where any traces of U.S. presence become “tar- gets for ire,” she adds, no amount of security is adequate “where the host government cannot or will not protect us.” Despite the constancy of threats, Johnson suggests the need for more “diplomatic discretion,” now often severely con- strained by security regulations, and recognition of “acceptable risk,” understood by diplomats but hard for the public to toler- ate. No one suggests confining all city police officers to walled compounds, she says, but the risk of dying in the line of duty for a Foreign Service officer is roughly equal to the risk facing a D.C. police officer. “Are we ready to accept that?” she asks. In the location and design of its embassies, the State Depart- ment aspires not just to build diplomatic workplaces, but to introduce America to a curious and eager, but often hostile audience. Public diplomacy programs aspire to do the very same thing by speaking directly to citizens around the world, not indirectly through high- or low-profile architecture. It might be useful to establish a dialogue between PD initiatives and the Design Excellence program, bearing in mind the fact that inno-