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SIS Building
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===Architectural criticism=== [[File:MI6 building lookup.jpg|left|thumb|Detail of the Vauxhall Bridgefoot elevation]] The SIS building was reviewed favourably by [[Deyan Sudjic]] in ''[[The Guardian]]'' in 1992; he described it as an "epitaph for the architecture of the eighties".<ref name="GuardJun92">{{cite news |last=Sudjic |first=Deyan |author-link=Deyan Sudjic |date=19 June 1992 |title=The building of a not so secret service |format=pdf |newspaper=The Guardian |location=London (UK) |url= https://www.proquest.com/docview/187395472 |id={{ProQuest|187395472}} |via= ProQuest Archiver |url-access=subscription }}</ref> Sudjic wrote that "It's a design which combines high seriousness in its classical composition with a possible unwitting sense of humour. The building could be interpreted equally plausibly as a Mayan temple or a piece of clanking art deco machinery", and added that the most impressive thing about Farrell's design was the way he had not "confined himself to a single idea" as the building "grows and develops as you move around it".<ref name="GuardJun92" /> In their 2014 ''Guide to London's Contemporary Architecture'', Kenneth Allinson and Victoria Thornton wrote:{{blockquote|Some see this building as Farrell's most controlled and mature building – a rich diet, certainly, but not a cacophony of rhetorical features, nor without the unselfconscious virtuosity which can uplift and excite. But it is undoubtedly too [[Gotham City]] for the taste of many. Farrell's many critics and opponents ... would call it a nightmare: a secret service fortress, provided by a private speculator, designed by an avowed populist, and sited on a most prominent river location. Indubitably, it is a bizarre phenomenon.<ref name="AllinsonThornton2014"/>}} Feargus O'Sullivan on the other hand mentioned the nickname "[[Nicolae Ceaușescu|Ceaușescu]] Towers" for the building, referring to the [[Palace of the Parliament|architecture]] of Socialist Romania, and derided the whole neighbourhood of newly constructed buildings in Vauxhall as "[[Dubai]]-on-Thames".<ref>{{cite news|last1=O'Sullivan|first1=Feargus|title=America's Passive-Aggressive New Embassy Arrives in London|url=https://www.citylab.com/design/2017/12/americas-passive-aggressive-new-embassy-arrives-in-london/548417/|newspaper=Bloomberg.com|publisher=The Atlantic|access-date=19 Dec 2017|date=15 Dec 2017}}</ref>
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