For years it was a concrete reservoir in Barnes, southwest London. The kind of concrete reservoir that accumulates stolen supermarket trolleys, rusting oil drums, glue sniffers and dead cats.
No longer. After some $20 million and five years of labor, Europe's largest urban wetland creation project is complete. Its name? Just "The Wetland Centre."
It is gorgeous. Covering 42 hectares of man-made pools, lagoons, reed beds and lakes, the Wetland Centre is an environmental tour de force.