Land lease signing ceremony held for new US Embassy

Within the framework of US Vice President Kamala Harris’s visit to Vietnam, US Embassy Chargé d’Affaires Christopher Klein and the Director of the Hanoi Department of Natural Resources Bui Duy Cuong signed an agreement on August 25 to lease a land lot to build a new US Embassy in Hanoi.

The signing of the agreement took place in the presence of Vice President Harris, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Nguyen Quoc Dung, and Hanoi Chairman Chu Ngoc Anh.

With total capital of about $1.2 billion, the new embassy will be located on a 3.2-ha land lot in Cau Giay district.

Following the normalization of US-Vietnam diplomatic relations in 1995, the Vietnamese Government committed to providing the US with a site for an embassy in Hanoi. Continuing to build on the growing partnership, the two countries reached an agreement on the new embassy site in 2019. Earlier this year, the Hanoi People’s Committee granted approval for the US to lease the site, issuing a Land Lease Decision for 99 years. Today’s signing ceremony is the culmination of these commitments.

Representing a significant milestone in the US’s diplomatic relationship with Vietnam, the new embassy boasts a modern urban landscape that reflects the city’s culture and vitality. It will ensure that the US platform for diplomacy in Hanoi is positioned to support - and be a symbol of - cooperation, friendship, and progress for many years to come.
Inspired by Ha Long Bay in northeast Vietnam, the building materials portray the forward-looking, reflective, and transparent approach to US diplomacy. Also inspired by the agricultural traditions of farming and rice production, as seen in landforms in the Mekong and Red River Deltas, the landscape connects the site with its own history as an active rice paddy field as recently as the early 2000s.