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The IRA's bomb in London's Docklands damaged 650 council homes, breaking approximately 1,000 windows. It also damaged several office buildings including the John Seifert-designed Post Modern blocks at South Quays; these comprise offices and a shopping plaza. Among the organisations in other offices located here were the RIBA Journal (a staff member was injured in the blast) and Building magazine. According to Jane Lewis of Building Design, the bomb caused pounds 100m worth of damage, much of it through "glass being blown out of the predominantly late 1980s buildings".

In response, Owen Luder, the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects has called on the construction industry to produce safer forms of glass; if car windscreens can be made shatter-proof, Luder suggests, then surely the same thing can be done for buildings. Until such glass is made readily available, the Glass and Glazing Federation recommends taking such simple precautions as applying film to the back of glass and installing bomb-blast curtains, those unsightly appendages to be seen dangling from the windows of ministries and intelligence service headquarters.