The London Daily News

24 February, 2010 11:57 (GMT +00:00)

Fortress America, the new US embassy castle planned for London

News Desk

New images have been unveiled of the "environmentally conscious glass cube" building designed by US architects Kieran Timberlake, for the new US embassy on Nine Elms in south London.

The building criticised by Mayor Johnson and various other groups including the government's own architectural watchdog described the design in November as "architectural watchdog" as lacking a "sufficiently civilising effect" on the local area.

The London Daily News reported in November:

The US authorities have already made it clear that security for the building and its staff is a "paramount concern" with a source who spoke to the London Daily News who works in the existing Grosvenor Square embassy saying:

"The locals here in Mayfair wanted us out, we are leaving, now we are told the building in Wandsworth is not 'civilised' enough I think there is a problem here of British snobbishness".

The design by US architect James Timberlake includes a moat-like ditch along one side of the building. The inclusion of the moat was justified in Timberlake's words in The Guardian as "a defence against terror attacks and there would be "no fences of walls".

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