Fortress London: The New US Embassy and the Rise of Counter-Terror Urbanism

摘要

A squat glass cube rises above the banks of the River Thames in Nine Elms, southwest London, colored with the same dark greenish-gray pallor as the murky waters of the river itself. It has a similar medicinal hue to the cheap glazing of the speculative apartment blocks nearby, but this is one of the most expensive fagades in town-and there's a reason for its sludgy tinge. This building's glass walls are six inches thick, formed from an elaborate sandwich of laminated sheets that make it capable of withstanding the most fearsome bomb a terrorist could throw at it.