Open letter to halt the architecture design of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem

Open Letter to KSP Architects re_U.S. Embassy plan in Jerusalem

1 March 2023

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Open Letter to Architects Krueck Sexton Partners

Re: U.S. Embassy plan in Jerusalem
Plan 101-0810796 – “Diplomatic Compound – USA, Hebron Road, Jerusalem”

​We, the undersigned, are writing this letter in regard to the proposed plan of the U.S. government to double down on Trump’s plan to build a new embassy compound in occupied Jerusalem. The proposed embassy is planned to be built on a plot of land – the “Allenby Barracks” – that was illegally confiscated from its original Palestinian owners. Concerned with the ethical implications of this project for the architecture profession, we are calling on the Chicago-based architecture firm Krueck Sexton Partners (KSP), and other companies complicit in this plan, to immediately withdraw from the Israeli planning process and stop their participation in and endorsement of Israel’s illegal seizures of Palestinian land in Jerusalem.

The Biden administration is following through on Trump’s egregious break with decades of U.S. policy by ordering the move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, and recognizing the city as Israel’s capital. The embassy plan is a violation of Jerusalem’s special corpus separatum status under international law – meaning that sovereignty over Jerusalem remains undetermined. It is also a violation of the United States’ obligations under the Vienna Convention, which states that any diplomatic mission established must be within the express territorial sovereignty of that state. Because of Jerusalem’s corpus separatum status, this constitutes a clear breach of the Convention and violates Palestinians’ right to self-determination. That the embassy is to be built on the particular site in question, land confiscated from Palestinians under Israel’s discriminatory Absentee Property Law, adds an additional layer of unlawfulness to the plan. As clarified in this letter sent by Adalah and the Center for Constitutional Rights in November 2022 to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, this plan is in “violation of international law, including Article 46 of the Hague Regulations. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have identified the Absentees’ Property Law as a foundational tool of Israel’s oppression and domination of Palestinians within a broader Apartheid system.” As designers, KSP Partners become not only complacent, but active participants in such violations.

The historical ownership of this land is well-documented; notably, through documents from the Israel State Archives, which confirm that most of the Allenby Barracks site is land that belongs to Palestinians forcibly displaced from their homes by the state of Israel in 1948. Several of the owners and their descendants are now U.S. citizens, to whom the U.S. owes additional obligations regarding the protection of their property. The U.S. Department of State has duties both under agency rules to protect the overseas property interests of its citizens and under the U.S. Constitution, whose Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause prohibits the extralegal governmental confiscation of such property. As project architects, Krueck Sexton Partners are complicit in the U.S. State Department’s participation in the violation of the property rights of its own citizens.

Architecture institutions and practices are undergoing a long overdue examination of the profession’s ethical responsibilities and accountability. More specifically, architects and planners at work in the U.S. today are grappling with the profession’s history and ongoing complicity with and benefit from systems of oppression, including Indigenous land expropriation. Krueck Sexton Partners aims to set itself apart within the landscape of architecture practice by “advocating for the future” and providing design outcomes capable of “improving cities and lives” and promoting “healthy, vibrant, and sustainable communities.” The firm claims a commitment to ethical labor practices, and “social innovation, equity, and dignity for all.”

The most recent American Institute of Architects (AIA)  “statement of our values” calls for “fair housing policies, civil rights protections, and accessibility to the built environment for all,” advocates for “policies that invest in well-designed civic infrastructure,” and works to “improve the built environment”. Architectural schools across the U.S. are in the process of transforming their pedagogy in order to address the profession’s role in systemic injustice and harm. KSP Partners Ronald A. Krueck and Mark P. Sexton are affiliated with academic and other institutions in the U.S., including the American Institute of Architects, the IIT College of Architecture in Chicago, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Sexton is Co-Chair of the IIT College of Architecture’s Board of Advisors, while Krueck is a recipient of the AIA Lifetime Achievement Award. We call on them to uphold the responsibilities that come with such affiliations and recognition, and consider the ethical implications of their practice, and the precedents they would be setting for generations to come.

Their participation in the plan for the US embassy in Jerusalem stands in direct opposition to above-mentioned values, and the values of leading architectural practitioners, scholars, and organizations in the U.S. and worldwide, as demonstrated by the list of signatories below. Ethics do not cease to be applicable across borders. Palestinians cannot inhabit, sustain livelihoods, nor plan for and improve their environment without access to their own lands due to illegal land confiscation. The plan for the US embassy project in Jerusalem is a clear ethical case that demands the refusal of architects to participate in the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians in Jerusalem.

We call on Krueck Sexton Partners to immediately withdraw from the U.S. Embassy project in Jerusalem and refuse to be complicit in a project that will cause irreparable harm to Palestinian people and Palestinian rights.

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403 people signed this letter