The First American Embassy in Pakistan
This is a guest blog post written by APF Leadership Council member Fareed Zaman.
The United States opened its first Embassy in Pakistan in the port city of Karachi in 1961. Situated near the Marriot Hotel on Abdullah Haroon Road, the Embassy operated for five years until it was regraded to Consulate status, with the opening of a new U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. Now standing as a concrete relic of the Cold War, the structure still holds onto much of its former glory, when it announced the end of colonial reign on the Indian subcontinent, and the arrival of long-term American strategic presence.
Construction of the diplomatic facility began six years earlier, and finished fourteen years after President Harry Truman, on August 5, 1947, wrote to Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Governor General of the Dominion of Pakistan, congratulating Pakistan on its “emergence among the family of nations.” The United States first established a temporary Embassy with Charles W. Lewis, Jr. as Chargé d’Affairs ad interim. With the establishment of the more permanent Embassy building, the relationship between the two countries began expanding into a broader, multi-faceted partnership in the areas of education, energy, and trade and investment. The two sides also enjoyed a close security partnership.
The modernist features of the former U.S. Embassy contrasted with the colonial urban landscape of Karachi, thanks to the American modernists who designed the building: Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander. By the time he was commissioned to draw up the civic and public institution in the South Asian port city, Neutra was renowned for the simple geometries of his modernist homes in southern California. His residential projects typically used steel and glass, and prefabricated elements that made his designs easy to build, and lent them a modernist appearance. The April 1, 2011 issue of the Architectural Digest describes Neutra’s design style as “clean” and “crisp.” His homes “inspired countless architects and emboldened preservationists in an area that was notoriously quick to raze landmarks.” An example of Neutra’s earlier projects is the Lovell House in Los Angeles built between 1927-1929 in the International Style for physician and naturopath Phillip Lovell. The “Health House,” as Neutra called it, won him architect-stardom. Constructed on a terraced Los Angeles hillside, the residence was designed to fit uniquely into the landscape.
The former Embassy’s design drew on modernism while responding to the local climate. It incorporated Neutra’s “biorealism” philosophy, a theory distinct from the modernist movement that draws on neuroscience, connoting “the inherent and inseparable relationship between man and nature.” Four stories span the height of the concrete structure. A long unadorned, subtly curved, rectangular slab raised on columns with an open, glazed ground floor adjoins a cantilevered porte cochere that unevenly divides the façade. In its early years, the former Embassy was separated from the road by a steel picket fence to serve as a public and civic presence in an era of new thinking. The stark, slab building, reflective of the 1950s International Style, was designed to withstand the hot climate, with the use of narrow horizontal, strip windows; vertical adjustable louvres; and flowing water in the landscaping.
An interesting anecdote follows the January 2011 decommissioning of the building. Once the structure became defunct, civil society groups in Karachi including the award-winning documentary filmmaker, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, mobilized to urge the United States to donate the building to the people of Karachi, so that it could be used for cultural shows.
“We wanted to preserve [the former Consulate] and convert it into a museum, [a] theatre for the performing arts, [and] have music, arts, [and] food,” said she. Reminiscing those early years when one could “drive right up to the building,” Obaid-Chinoy hoped to revive the spirit of openness of those times with support from the United States. Though she and her colleagues fell short on this count, they did manage to secure two wins: they got the city to cancel its planned demolition of the site; and by 2014, local architects secured a protected heritage status for the property through the courts.
“The building [designed by Neutra] represents an attempt by the State Department to insert and, to some extent, integrate an American architectural paradigm into the local Pakistani building and craft culture.”
Learn More
Arif Belgaumi, Legacy of the Cold War: Richard Neutra in Pakistan
Jane Loeffler, Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America’s Embassies, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY, 1998.
Barbara Lamprecht, “The Obsolescence of Optimism? Neutra and Alexander’s U.S. Embassy, Karachi, Pakistan,” Lamprecht Architextural, June 23, 201
Thomas Hines, Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture: A Biography and History, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1994.