Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:39:25 +0000

Description

And Design are looking for an outstanding industrial designer to join our team in Putney, SW London.

We focus on delivering innovative design solutions and developing our own brand products such as Litecup and üutensil. We are looking for some one with energy, creativity and vision to help the company to move into the next stage of our development.

Working as part of a small team, you will take responsibility for a full range of tasks from concept to production, including packaging, web development, POS, factory visits, client meetings, trade shows, and making you’re own tea!

Specific Skills

We expect a Bachelors or Masters degree in product design, at least 3 years experience, including proficiency in 2D CAD and Solidworks. An interest in household consumer products is desirable.

In the hope of ending its reputation for Fortress America-style embassies, the State Department yesterday selected a Philadelphia architecture firm known for its thoughtful and environmentally rigorous work to design a new, more welcoming U.S. Embassy in London.

The firm, KieranTimberlake, beat out three better-known finalists in a lengthy competition whose jury included top design-world figures, the State Department announced. This is only the fourth time the foreign service has held such a competition to select an embassy architect. This one was organized with the intention of making a statement about America's democratic and environmental aspirations, even while it struggles to accommodate the intense security demands of a post-9/11 world.

Embassy officials in London held a special presentation to unveil the design. Architecture is played as a blood sport in Britain, and it is unclear how KieranTimberlake's modern glass cube will go over with the traditionalist camp, led by Prince Charles. The $500 million embassy, to be situated on an industrial site a mile downriver on the Thames from the Houses of Parliament, will be by far the greenest the United States has ever built.

James Timberlake, who founded his Spring Garden-area office with Stephen Kieran, said in a telephone interview from London that their entry was intended to be a transparent building, surrounded by green space where the public can relax. Their design is a perfect glass cube set in a circular park. Although portions of the park are raised for security reasons, the block is approachable compared with other American embassies.

"You don't see bollards because they're integrated in landscape," Timberlake said. "You don't see walls. There are no fences."

Visitors, however, will still have to pass through a screening pavilion before entering the embassy lobby. There is another entrance for staff, and separate lobby corridors.

KieranTimberlake teamed with the Philadelphia landscape architects Olin to create the park around the building. A half-moon pond will camouflage the ground-level security buffers. Even so, it's hard to see that pond as anything other than a castle moat. The official staff entrance that floats over the water feature is the symbolic drawbridge.

For serious, urban-minded architects, designing an American embassy in these tense times is almost sure to lead to regret. Federal law requires a whopping 100-foot setback from the street. Security consultants often wind up calling the shots.

That said, KieranTimberlake has come up with light, shimmering cube that is a vast improvement over the recently opened embassy in Berlin, with its prison-like windows. This embassy rises on tapered legs to allow passersby clear views into the lobby, which will be adorned with a wall-size work by a yet-unnamed American artist.

It is also highly responsible environmentally. "We wanted to create a building that would be an environment for diplomacy, but also serve as diplomacy for the environment," Timberlake explained.

The designs by the three other finalists - Thom Mayne's Morphosis, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, and Richard Meier & Partners - were similarly packed with green technology. But none offered the same degree of transparency, said Jonathan Blyth, a spokesman for the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations.

KieranTimberlake, which designed the award-winning Sidwell Friends middle school in Washington - where Malia Obama attends classes - is known for developing original ideas for saving energy. Levine Hall, at the University of Pennsylvania, was one of the first to use a glass skin that incorporated the building's ventilation systems.

In environmental terms, the embassy will be everything America aspires to but rarely achieves: It will be nearly self-sufficient in energy production and even capable of operating off-grid "for an extended period," according to officials. Unlike most glass office buildings, which appear slick and hard-edged, this one will look soft and pillowy thanks to the lightweight plastic scrims that will be attached to the façade like boat sails.

Essentially vertical fins, the scrims will do triple duty. Made from the same Etfe fabric that was quilted onto the Beijing Watercube for the Olympics, they will be embedded with photovoltaic cells that can convert sunlight into energy, even in foggy, soggy London. They will also act as sunscreens to keep interiors from overheating. And because the fins are pinched at regular intervals, they create a rippling, sculptural effect on the glass surface.

Over the years, the State Department has been harshly criticized at home and abroad for its dreary embassies. During a U.S. Senate hearing last year, Sen. John Kerry said he "cringed" at the sight of some recent embassies. "We're building fortresses around the world," Kerry complained. "We're separating ourselves from people in these countries."

With the London embassy, the State Department first consulted with officials from the neighboring Wandsworth Borough, a part of London, to make sure they were happy with the plan for the five-acre site. Wandsworth officials hope that the project will kick-start the redevelopment of the former industrial area.

British critics are still arguing about the merits of the current U.S. Embassy, a full-block building designed in 1960 by Eero Saarinen after he won the State Department's first architecture competition. The United States has had a presence in that tony Grosvenor Square neighborhood since the days of John Adams, but Blyth said that the building had become overcrowded and that security was impossible to maintain in the dense urban setting.

It remains to be seen whether KieranTimberlake's design receives a warmer welcome than the old embassy. Prince Charles has been crusading for years against the incursion of modern high-rises in low-rise London.

 

Contact architecture critic Inga Saffron at 215-854-2213 or isaffron@phillynews.com.