SUMMARY

Following the Second World War, the United States embarked on a decades-long building program to construct foreign embassies in 25 countries around the world in an effort to contain the threat to democracy posed by the Soviet Union and communism. After the Soviet Union successfully conducted a nuclear weapons test in 1949, surprising the international community, the containment of communism became the primary foreign policy goal of the United States government. To this end, the United States expanded its nuclear arsenal and military presence, but also recognized that cultural diplomacy, or “soft power,” in the form of education, art exhibitions, lectures, film screenings, and architectural design were important strategies to persuade other countries about the benefits of democracy.

The US State Department hired leading modern architects, such as Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Eero Saarinen, and Edward Durrell Stone, to design embassies that expressed the American ideals of a progressive, democratic society. Located in the center of major cities, these buildings were porous and open to their urban surroundings. They employed large amounts of glass and abstract geometries, sometimes combined with local materials and forms. Embassies served as local headquarters for American diplomats, members of the United States Information Agency, and operatives working for the Central Intelligence Agency, but they also included public spaces, such as libraries where visitors could read about American culture, auditoriums for lectures and film screenings, as well as art installations featuring American artists, particularly the abstract expressionists. 

Despite such ambitions, the values championed overseas through the new embassies and their programming was contradicted by the realities of American society. While the State Department celebrated the virtues of democracy, millions of Americans were being denied basic freedoms. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and the dictates of white supremacy were routinely imposed on those who lived at the margins of power. The open, optimistic, democratic architecture of American embassies proved too often to be merely symbolic. 

Today, these idealistic structures are being decommissioned and sold. The new embassies being built to replace their midcentury counterparts are effectively bunkers, usually located outside of cities on large tracts of land surrounded by security barriers. Glass walls have given way to concrete walls and bollards. 

Modern democracy is based on the open exchange of ideas, fostering a culture of creativity and inclusion. At the height of the Cold War, the United States sought to embody those ideals in diplomatic architecture that symbolized the democratic principles of transparency and openness. The bunkers being built to replace them symbolize a new set of ideals: fear and defensiveness.