In the craggy hills on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital sits a fortified concrete building encased in a rust-red cage: the British embassy.
When commissioning its construction in the early 2000s – the beginning of the “war on terror” – the brief given by the British government to architects called for a design that would serve as a highly secure “bunker” and, at the same time, encourage people to “come in and have a cup of tea”. It was, after all, a building for diplomacy.
