Fine Whine

My apologies for my absence...I was in London for two weeks having surgery on my knees and blogging by iPad is...challenging.

Also challenging, having surgery on both of your knees.

One of the less fun parts of being in the Foreign Service can be receiving any kind of medical care. Unlike in the States, where if you have decent insurance you can get your medical issue dealt with fairly quickly, when you are overseas, it can take a while. So my surgery on the 14th was the culmination of months of pain, a useless visit with the Regional Medical Officer, a torn meniscus (actually torn in two places and cracked in a third), another couple weeks of pain, an appointment with an Estonian orthopedist (and a demonstration of how bad my Estonian medical vocabulary is), and then two and a half more weeks of waiting until we could get me to London for surgery.

Of course, once I got to London, the care was as good as any in the States. Maybe even better. The UK has socialized health care paid for by people's taxes. But on top of that, they have a private health care system that you can use if you have private insurance. We use the private system because we obviously don't pay taxes to the UK. And it was excellent.

I had an appointment the day after I arrived with a private doctor, and he then scheduled an MRI for a couple hours later. He recommended surgery on both knees, so we went to the embassy, who handled everything. They have an excellent medical unit that handled around 500 medical evacuations (medevacs) per year and they have it down to clockwork. We filled out all the forms, and because I was in the hospital overnight, the Department pays for everything and I reimburse them once I get reimbursed by my insurance.

Two days later, I was checked into the Princess Grace, a private hospital in London not far from the hotel where I stayed, also booked for me by the embassy. The hospital was great. You walk into a tidy waiting room, give them your name, and they come within five or so minutes to check you into your private room. Which includes a wine list. No, not kidding.

Told you I wasn't kidding

The room also had menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner (with a selection, including things like roasted pheasant that was actually awesome!), movies on demand (for free), and free wifi. An hour or so later, they came and got me, wheeled me into surgery and a split second later (okay a couple hours, but I was out, so it seemed like a split second), I was done. And I was on my feet by that evening.

Had all of this been done at home, or more quickly that how long it took here, I couldn't possibly have any complaints. But let me tell you that getting all that done is HARD when you are not at home. Even in England, which shares (sort of) our native language, it is still challenging. You aren't in your own environment. You don't know how best to get from place to place. You have to do things like get into cabs that are taller than most cars and the stepping into which causes your muscle to tear just a bit in your newly operated on knee (which then causes you to spend said cab ride curled up into a ball on the cab floor).

And you don't know when or whether you can return to work. Our job requires a medical clearance in addition to a security clearance. A class 1 clearance means you can work anywhere in the world. You have to have that to join the Foreign Service (because it wouldn't be fair to those already in the service to hire someone who could only serve in western Europe. We all have to do our time in hardship posts). When you go on medevac, your Class 1 clearance is suspended. And you can't return to post until it is restored. Now luckily, the medical unit at the embassy can do all the paperwork to restore your clearance if the doctor clears you, but the doctor's clearance is by no means assured. And if he does clear you, and you do go back to post, you can not go on medevac again from that post for that issue.

So if my knees for whatever reason don't heal, I am screwed. My only option would be to curtail from post (leave for good) and go back to DC. And hope there is a position for me there.

That is added stress on top of an already stressful situation.

The good news is I got my clearance back and I am home. The bad news is my knees are jacked and I will likely need replacements in the not too distance future. Other than repairing the meniscus, most of this was all as a stop gap to give me pain relief until I get them replaced in a year or so (hopefully much more than a year, but the cold, damp weather in Estonia makes them hurt so that I am not overly optimistic).

Also not especially fun to think about...metal knees in a career that has you going through airport security A LOT.

Hello, strip searches!

New Design for London Embassy

This piece was in today's Washington Post. So much of the debate of "fortress embassies" has portrayed the issue as either-or. We can either keep our diplomats safe or we can have attractive, inviting embassies. And much of what I have seen has fallen on the side of "we are really being paranoid...we need to be more inviting." Sorry, but since I don't get a gun or bullet-proof vest, and since terrorists DO like to target diplomats overseas, I like safe embassies.

So I am really glad to see the new design is both safe AND inviting.

Because like our soldiers, I know that serving my country is dangerous. And like them, I want to be able to control the amount of danger as much as possible. I suspect my dad and wife would agree!

Photo courtesty of KieranTimberlake

KieranTimberlake chosen to build 'modern, open' U.S. Embassy in London

By Philip Kennicott
Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The State Department has announced that a Philadelphia-based architecture firm has won the closely watched competition to design the new U.S. Embassy in London. KieranTimberlake, which also designed an innovative and environmentally sustainable structure for Washington's Sidwell Friends School, beat out three other major architectural firms.

The design calls for a secure and environmentally efficient glass cube set atop a colonnade in a landscape with a pond and pathways open to the public. Speaking from London, architect James Timberlake called it "an urban building in an urban park."

The other finalists, in a process that began with 37 entrants and was winnowed to four over the past year and a half, were Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, Morphosis Architects and Richard Meier & Partners Architects.

Seeking fresh thinking

The decision to open the design selection to competition is rare but not unprecedented -- this is the fourth time the State Department has done so -- demonstrating the importance of the London embassy to the United States' long-standing relationship with Great Britain. It might also reflect the State Department's desire for fresh and deeper thinking about how to design aesthetically pleasing but secure facilities. In recent years, the government has relied on standard embassy designs as it worked to rapidly replace or upgrade overseas facilities in the nervous post-2001 environment. Many of those were criticized for being fortresslike, forbidding, and isolated from their surroundings and the people they serve.

The choice of the KieranTimberlake design suggests that the more open process has yielded exactly what the State Department's Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations was looking for: "a modern, open and secure" building that was sensitive to London's architectural context.

Set on a site of almost five acres on the south side of the Thames River, the new structure will be positioned on an angle to the surrounding streets. A semicircular pond will function as a protective moat along the Thames side, while a spiraling landscape to the south sets the building away from potential car or truck bombs. A complex envelope of blast-resistant glass and a polymer skin (known as ETFE) will provide both security and energy efficiency while shading the building on its sun-exposed sides.

"I have to be careful in talking about specific security requirements of this particular building," Timberlake said. "But the glass skin is quite robust."

It also helps the building, which is estimated to cost about $500 million, put a transparent face to the city and maximizes natural light for workers inside. Photovoltaics in the building's skin and on its roof will generate electricity.

Design drawings show a cube that shimmers and dissolves in muted rhythms both vertically and horizontally. The spiraling landscape continues as a motif inside the building, culminating in the "ever more focused, secure and enclosed center atop the structure."

Jane Loeffler, author of "The Architecture of Diplomacy," a history of U.S. embassy facilities, praised the selection.

"They really want to make this a positive statement, and it looks like they are doing that," Loeffler said. "It is very fashion-forward, but it's not just trendy; it has rationale and science behind it."

The KieranTimberlake design wasn't the most radical in terms of its basic shape and silhouette. That honor belonged to the Morphosis proposal, which placed an irregular, curving and angled form on top of columns. But the Morphosis drawing (provided by the State Department) suggests a complicated landscape of perforated grassy terraces and green roofs that would have put blank walls to the street in some locations. Richard Meier & Partners proposed a sleek assemblage of vertical and horizontal planes defended by security bollards. Pei Cobb Freed offered a more basic curving glass and metal hat on top of a dull plinth, with a high fence around the perimeter.

The KieranTimberlake design is more formally pure, and effective at maintaining openness.

Self-reliant in a crisis

The winning design's emphasis on sustainability isn't just trendy architectural positioning, argued Loeffler. It is symbolically important as a diplomatic gesture. It also demonstrates how sustainability and security are interwoven in embassy architecture. A structure with its own water and energy sources isn't just kind to the environment, it's also self-reliant during a crisis. Loeffler cites the U.S. Embassy in Haiti -- an exemplar of the State Department's recent more fortresslike structures -- which withstood last month's devastating earthquake and has kept functioning through the aftermath.

The challenges faced by the architects were profound. The new embassy, which is slated to break ground in 2013 and be completed by 2017, replaces the still controversial architectural landmark designed by Eero Saarinen at Grosvenor Square (opened in 1960). Aging and overcrowded, the Saarinen building's close alignment with the streetscape, and other structural issues, had made the building increasingly problematic and cluttered with security add-ons. But the decision to find a more secure site for a modern embassy was fraught with sentiment: The relocation to the south side of the Thames not only exchanges a tony north Thames address for a gritty south side one, but it breaks a tradition of American diplomacy at Grosvenor Square dating to John Adams's appointment as the first U.S. minister to the Court of St. James's in 1785.
The Nine Elms site, as the new location is known, is in an "industrial, or post-industrial" part of the Borough of Wandsworth, according to Timberlake. The goal, he said, is to help Wandsworth catalyze development in the area.

The competition for the London design follows more recent competitions to design embassies in Beijing (won by Skidmore Owings & Merrill in 2001) and Berlin (won by Moore Ruble Yudell in 1995). Before that, the first competition for a U.S. embassy was also for London, in 1956, which Saarinen won. The Saarinen building was sold to a Qatari real estate development company in December, though the United States will continue to use the structure until relocating to the new one.