Projects

2020 James Templeton Kelley Prize: Ian Miley’s “Stranger in Moscow: The Diplomatic Illusive”

Image showing Aerial perspective showing the embassy compound against the backdrop of the adjacent Stalinist skyscraper.

by Ian Miley (MArch I AP ’20) — Recipient of the James Templeton Kelley Prize, Masters in Architecture I

Diplopia (n.) describes a disorder of vision in which two images of a single object are seen. Situated among other disciplinary -opias, diplopia is re-imagined to invoke a double place, more narrowly, a space for diplomacy. Our modern concept of diplomacy emerged in the Italian Renaissance in the formalization of epistolary exchange between sovereign states. Ancestral letters – or diplomas – on the one hand an official state document conferring privilege, on the other simply a paper folded twice over, fold revelation within the act of concealment. This is the duplicitous act upon which diplomatic practices are founded. Since its emergence as a genre of space, the diplomatic setting has been framed by dramaturgical and optical techniques intended to produce a doubling of reality.

This thesis considers the Embassy for the U.S. diplomatic mission to the Russian Federation in Moscow — a structure implicated in a history of espionage, riddled with listening devices, procured via labyrinthine construction contracts. The reciprocal subversions performed across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War — succinctly illustrated in MAD Magazine’s Spy vs. Spy comic strips — appear to have been recently reanimated. Through the interplay of illusionistic techniques drawn from the ecclesiastical chancel, 1960s Op-Art, and recursive computation, distortive methods propose a dialectic of concealment and revelation in architecture. Stagecraft and statecraft conspire to project the possibility of built form through the production of doubt.

Image of the site plan of the embassy compound, with the new chancery to the north
Site plan of the embassy compound, with the new chancery to the north
Image of Site section of the embassy compound, cutting through new and old chanceries as well as the adjacent Stalinist skyscraper.
Site section of the embassy compound, cutting through new and old chanceries as well as the adjacent Stalinist skyscraper.
Image of Axonometric view of the embassy compound, showing the refractive capacity of the chancery’s lenticular double skin.
Axonometric view of the embassy compound, showing the refractive capacity of the chancery’s lenticular double skin.
Image of Elevational rendering of the chancery, demonstrating the selective opacity and transparency of the façade.
Elevational rendering of the chancery, demonstrating the selective opacity and transparency of the façade.
Image of First floor plan of the chancery, housing reception, security, and cultural functions.
First-floor plan of the chancery, housing reception, security, and cultural functions.
Image of Fifth floor plan of the chancery, housing the functions of bilateral diplomacy.
Fifth-floor plan of the chancery, housing the functions of bilateral diplomacy.
Image of Eighth floor plan of the chancery, housing the intelligence functions and confidential archives
Eighth-floor plan of the chancery, housing the intelligence functions and confidential archives
Image of Interior perspective through one of the many enfilades in the embassy.
Interior perspective through one of the many enfilades in the embassy.

 

Project Acknowledgments

Rhetorical support: Samantha Vasseur (MArch, MDes HPDM ’21)

Drawing support: Samantha Vasseur (MArch, MDes HPDM ’21), Ian Bankhead (MArch ’22), Aleksis Bertoni (MArch ’18), Cynthia Deng (MArch, MUP ’21), Isabel Tiange Wang (MArch ’22)

Rendering support: Jung In Seo (MIT MArch ’20), Dalma Földesi (MIT MArch ’20), Danmo Fu (MArch ’22), Glen Marquardt (MArch ’21)