Going Global: Architects Look Beyond U.S. Borders for Design and Business Challenges (Practice‪)‬

Hugh Newell Jacobsen, FAIA, has designed buildings in nine countries, but the most memorable, by far, was a library in Egypt that took 11 years to finish. Its progress, and the lack of it, coincided with the political upheavals of the late 1970s and early '80s, and the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat. In 1979, when the building's second floor was going up, it was firebombed and burned to the ground. "We had put up a sign saying that this library was a gift to the youth of Egypt from the people of the U.S., and signed AID [U.S. Agency for International Development]," says Jacobsen, of Washington, D.C. "They read it as CIA, and we had six firebombs the next day. So we didn't put up any more signs." By contrast, his subsequent projects have unfolded in such picturesque destinations as Greece, Italy, the Dominican Republic, and the South of France. Perhaps that's why he's so sanguine about working overseas. "It's surprisingly easy, because the language of architecture is drawing. You're talking about three things--gravity, water, and money--and it's all totally understandable with a pencil," says Jacobsen, whose gift for abstracting architectural forms crosses over to topics of conversation.