People
in London are used to traffic circles ("roundabouts"),
they're an everyday annoyance. This one, however,
is different. In the center is a massive IMAX movie
theater. The building rises out of the pavement like
a giant glass gas storage tank. The massive glass
walls allow people outside to see designs on the inside,
and allow people inside to see the city moving around
it. This is a change for what is essentially an oversized
high-tech movie house: People looking outward, rather
than inward. It's just one way the building integrates
itself with the neighborhood. Before this development,
it was a burned out urban core. Within months of the
theater opening, there was a renewed vibrancy, and
the start of urban renewal. This was due, in no small
part, to the fact that each homeless person who used
to live at the site was given a new home.
Photograph
©