The Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (S/OBO) is an agency of the United States Department of State charged with constructing, purchasing, and maintaining buildings and real estate in other countries. It is responsible for building and maintaining U.S. diplomatic mission facilities, including embassies and consulate buildings.
The organization was founded as the Office of Foreign Building Operations (FBO). In the 1950s, it achieved a high profile by hiring well-known modernist architects like Ralph Rapson, Harrison & Abramovitz, and Gordon Bunshaft. In the wake of the 1983 United States Embassy bombing in Beirut and the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, its focus has shifted from aesthetics to security.
In 2001 the Bureau was given its current name when it was upgraded to Bureau level within the Department.
As of 2011, the Bureau's director is Adam E. Namm.
Famous quotes containing the words bureau of, bureau, buildings and/or operations:
“We know what the animals do, what are the needs of the beaver, the bear, the salmon, and other creatures, because long ago men married them and acquired this knowledge from their animal wives. Today the priests say we lie, but we know better.”
—native American belief, quoted by D. Jenness in “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” Bulletin no. 133, Bureau of American Ethnology (1943)
“Only one marriage I regret. I remember after I got that marriage license I went across from the license bureau to a bar for a drink. The bartender said, “What will you have, sir?” And I said, “A glass of hemlock.””
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“The American who has been confined, in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on entering York Minster or St. Peter’s at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are imitations also,—faint copies of an invisible archetype.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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