In October, the US government announced it would be leaving London’s Grosvenor Square for a site south of the river, close to Terry Farrell’s high-security MI6 building.

It announced it was barring non US companies from competing to build the embassy for security reasons.

The US state department has now announced the nine longlisted firms, which will produce conceptual drawings, with a jury selecting four or five to produce formal designs.

Richard Rogers will sit on the jury, along with American ambassador Clyde D. Taylor, Thomas W. Hicks, Frances Halsband, Peter Rolland, Michaele Pride, Peter Palumbo, and James Carpenter.

Only US architects with ‘experience in the design of American embassies and other buildings’ were invited to tender for the project as designing the building will require access to classified information for which foreign firms are not eligible, according to the state department.

British companies will be eligible to act as sub contractors though.

The full shortlist:
// Richard Meier and Partners
// Morphosis Architects
// Gwathmey, Siegel and Associates
// Kallmann, McKinnell and Wood
// KieranTimberlake
// Kohn, Pedersen, Fox Associates
// PEI Cobb Freed and Partners
// Perkins and Will
// Skidmore, Owings and Merrill