黑洞社区

It was Bovis Lend Lease that eventually took control of the clean up at the site, now known as Ground Zero. Daniel Libeskind won the design competition for the new World Trade Center with his 鈥渘eedle skyscraper鈥� design. This later became the Freedom Tower after Libeskind鈥檚 vision was redesigned by World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein and Skidmore Owings & Merrill, as the entire project started to resemble the narrative of Ayn Rand鈥檚 The Fountainhead.

黑洞社区 design in the UK and elsewhere came under the microscope amid fears of chemical attacks by terror groups. Core Cities, a national group of building control officers hastily established to scrutinise high-profile buildings vulnerability to terrorist attacks, recommended fitting showers in the City of Manchester stadium to cleanse Commonwealth Games spectators in the event of a chemical attack.

Rodney Burrows, Core Cities鈥� chair, explained: 鈥淭he fire service does not have the capacity to hose down vast amounts of people, so one idea is to install shower units to decontaminate people.鈥�

Stadium design remained in the headlines after local authorities said football supporters would be prevented from leaving a stadium in the event of a terrorist attack using biological weapons. Later, the Metropolitan police were called into the Wembley stadium site to check that explosives hadn鈥檛 been hidden in the foundations, as security concerns around high-profile buildings intensified.

On the international stage, the 鈥渨ar on terror鈥� moved to Iraq as America and Britain led the 鈥渟hock and awe鈥� with a massive bombing onslaught on Baghdad. Saddam Hussein鈥檚 statute was memorably toppled in a momentarily iconic image, soon superseded by other more somber ones chronicling the chaos and violence that the invasion unleashed.

The bloody quagmire that the West found itself in left UK contractors reluctant to get involved in lucrative Iraq reconstruction contracts, because of fears the country would be too dangerous for their personnel. It didn鈥檛 matter 鈥� US firm Halliburton got most of them anyway. It later found itself under criminal investigation from the FBI, the US Justice Department and the Pentagon鈥檚 inspector general over accusations that it and its KBR subsidiary received special treatment for Iraqi reconstruction contracts because of their links to vice president and former Halliburton boss Dick Cheney.