Have you ever realised how much the Cape Town-based US embassy in Steenberg resembles Fort Knox?

Well, wait until you see what they have planned for London.

“Designed to be welcoming,” the building is “buffered by an 8ft-deep, crescent-shaped moat and surrounded by armed guards,” reports The Telegraph.

Haha.

Basically, a welcoming Fort Knox, then?

Indeed; instead of a perimeter fence, there are “discreetly disguising security measures,” such as bollards camouflaged by plants.

But for those working in the building, like Ambassador Woody Johnson, the new embassy represents “a signal to the world that this special relationship that we have is stronger and is going to grow and get better”:

He added that President Trump “mentioned that to me himself … He said ‘I want you to make it stronger’, and I intend to do that if I can.”

Okay, son.

Almost twice as big as the old US embassy in Grosvenor Square, the new building is thought to be “the most expensive in the world at $1bn” and has been funded “purely from selling US government properties in London”:

The new, bold building sits on a bend in the River Thames and has sweeping views across London to the Houses of Parliament. It is in Nine Elms, the largest regeneration project in Europe where a scrap of industrial land on the south bank of the Thames is being built on at astonishing speed. When finished, there will be 25,000 largely luxury homes, with Vauxhall at one end and the restored Battersea Power Station at the other.

Inside, the decor is glitzy, with a huge government insignia, glass stairs, sweeping stone walls and iridescent crests hung from the ceiling. Even the glass, blast-proof windows are covered in little stars, which is supposed to stop birds flying into the walls. The ambassador said he hoped to put his own stamp on the embassy and make the interiors more “patriotic”.

There are internal gardens which reflect different areas of the United States: one themed as the canyon lands of Arizona is filled with cacti, while the Pacific forest has steel girders cut to resemble redwood trees. The 12-floor block is almost self-sufficient in energy production – instead of a helipad on the roof there are solar panels. The building resembles a glass cube with delicate sails on the outside to shield it from the sun.

The embassy is set to open its doors tomorrow (Tuesday, January 16), but Donald Trump won’t be there. On Friday, he cancelled a February trip to officially open the embassy, blaming its “off location,” reports Business Insider:

He said the embassy was sold for “peanuts” in a poor deal negotiated by his predecessor Obama’s administration.

Because Trump knows real estate, hey?

But the US embassy was quick to hit back, a spokesman saying that the project was actually developed in 2007 when, yup, George W. Bush was in the White House:

“The US chancery in Grosvenor Square had aged beyond its ability to be improved to current security and life safety standards without extensive investment in infrastructure that would require appropriated dollars,” he said.

“In 2007, the department developed a plan to finance a new embassy project through a property swap for existing US government property in London.

“This solution allowed construction of a new chancery that meets all security standards, yet used no taxpayer dollars to fund the project.”

However, the real reason could be the amount of “peaceful protests” planned outside the embassy when Donald Trump is set to appear.

Who knows what’s going on in the least racist person you have ever interviewed’s mind.

[source:thetelegraph&businessinsider]