"This was a very tall structure, bigger than Big Ben, in open countryside against the Chiltern Hills, an area of outstanding natural beauty, surrounded by small villages and conservation areas with a lot of cultural heritage and listed buildings, " he said.

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The nearby pool house is a tall, pagoda-style structure modeled, in part, on the Katsura Imperial Villa in Japan, said Jeremy Fletcher, project manager for Dale Owen Overmyer Architects, which designed the compound.

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And under International Civil Aviation Organisation regulations, any structure over 45 metres tall on a flight path or near an aerodrome must be fitted with a medium-intensity aircraft warning light.

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ConEd officials Tuesday showed a 5-foot tall concrete wall now standing in front of a structure that housed signal equipment, which was flooded during the storm.

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Dubbed simply "The Cloud, " the structure would consist of two 400-foot tall mesh towers that are linked by a series of interconnected plastic bubbles, which would themselves house an observation deck inside and be used to display everything from Olympic scores and highlights to a "barometer of the city's interests and moods" outside (that latter bit comes courtesy of the group's partnership with Google).

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If a structure were built inside, it would be six or seven stories tall, by no means a skyscraper.

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