# MILITARIZED ARCHITECTURES /// Fortress London: Missiles on your Roof
Published
Fred Wigg Tower in Leytonstone (East London) (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
Yesterday, Judge Haddon-Cave of the Hight Court of England decided in favor of the British Minister of Defense that the installation of surface-to-air missiles on the roof of a 17 floor building in East London during the Olympics of this year. Residents of the Fred Wigg Tower in Leytonstone (see map below) had indeed challenged this decision in justice. Those missiles are being set-up in prevention of potential terrorist attacks against London during the Olympics. This decision marks a new step in the establishment of national states of emergency since the 2001 terrorists attacks against the United States. For the last decade, western countries declared themselves at war against terrorism and had implemented a certain amount of measures which grandly restraint freedom and privacy in favor of a claimed security. The so called “war against terrorism” is indeed convenient for governments to acquire more power over their citizens as terror precisely consists in the generalization of a feeling of fear among a population when the latter is confronted to a durable state of urgency. In other words, what maintains terror is not so much the original event of the attack -if I can allow myself to call this event “original” when in reality it is based on a long history- but rather the durable ideological “state of exception” that follows it.
As said yesterday by David Enright, one of the lawyer of the residents, “the Ministry of Defense now has the power to militarize the private homes of any person in Britain as long as they can demonstrate that there is, in their view, a matter of national security in play. They do not need to ask you, they do not need to consult you, but can take over your home, put a missile on your roof, a tank on your loan, or soldiers in your living room.” In my last article, I was evoking how domestic design could potentially unfold its weaponized characteristics, this new case provides us with one more example of such a process. It also demonstrates, if needed, that the weaponization of architecture is usually triggered by a legal framework which finds its embodiment in the physicality of architecture. For example, in the case of a legal apparatus like curfew or quarantine, an “innocent” home (but we know that there is no such a thing) can be transformed into a prison through its impermeable walls, floors and roof. In that London case, architecture is used for its height and the flatness of its roof (both advocated by the modern movement) in order to be transformed into a militarized machine.
Aerial photograph of East London. Olympics site is in color, red circle indicates the location of the Fred Wigg Tower
Aerial Photograph of the Fred Wigg Tower
Type of surface-to-air missile which will be set-up on the roof of the tower
