DannyB

Walking to France

The alarm is set but I wake up an hour before it rings. This gives more time for breakfast, double-checking that passport, tickets, euros, notebooks, pens, headphones, cameras are all in place. I might as well leave early rather than idle around at home. It will be interesting to see the port wake up; notContinue reading “Walking to France”

Empire of Corruption: A Radical Walk

Empire Latin: related to imperare, whence imperator, Emperor, 1. Supreme and extensive political domain2. Absolute sway, supreme control3. Emperorship – 1606 Corruption 1. The destruction or spoiling of anything, esp. by disintegration or decomposition, putreficatio – 17182. Infection, infected condition; also contagion, taint – 15983. Decomposition or putrid matter – 15264. A making or becomingContinue reading “Empire of Corruption: A Radical Walk”

Where are the Socialist Voices?

This is based on a Radical Walk that took place on Sunday 8 June 2025 as part of the London Festival of Architecture. It’s a longer than usual blog pieces because I get regular messages from people who say they would like to come along but for various reasons they can’t. So this is forContinue reading “Where are the Socialist Voices?”

No More Buildings

The Labour government has recently announced plans to build 1.5 million homes. Keir Starmer has promised ‘shovels in the ground and cranes in the sky’, suggesting that this is the only way to create that most mysterious place, the future. All this digging of trenches, pouring of concrete, chopping down of trees and no doubtContinue reading “No More Buildings”

The Gateway Flats, Dover

The Gateway Flats in Dover were completed in 1959. Over 200 council flats, with sea views and easy access to the sweeping, curving promenade by the harbour. There was some controversy at the time, and small echoes of that rumble on. Why should council tenants have such elegant and graceful housing? Why this intelligent andContinue reading “The Gateway Flats, Dover”

Cité-jardins de Champigny-sur-Marne

“In Paris in 1885, a judge declared that for a landlord to be compelled to lay on water in his houses for the use of the tenants was an interference with the liberty of the subject, and held that a water-supply was not an indispensable necessity for maintaining the healthiness of the a dwelling” CatherineContinue reading “Cité-jardins de Champigny-sur-Marne”

Ostheim, Stuttgart

Ostheim was discovered by chance, and perhaps the experience was more enjoyable for that. I was going to the REWE supermarket to buy a couple of bottles of beer. I walked along Landhausstrasse and slowly my senses started to pick up that there was something rather attractive here, rather unusual, in the local streets. I’mContinue reading “Ostheim, Stuttgart”

Paris Manuscripts

It was as if a scrap of paper was found in the street. One of those anonymous streets that lead through a time-space warp and into a fragment of the city that is both imagined and real. A door opens, tumble through, a dusty corridor, it’s airless and stale, there is someone in the cornerContinue reading “Paris Manuscripts”

The train to Paris, a city of Capital

There’s a crowd of people slowly moving toward platform 7 and the 13.31 train to Paris. I become aware of a young woman and man in close proximity. Why them? There are plenty of other people within a few inches or so. And yet no one bumps another and if they accidently do, they generallyContinue reading “The train to Paris, a city of Capital”

Tractors, Marx and Sowing Seeds

A woman in a trim blue padded coat stopped and asked if she could help. Blond hair blew in whisps across her face. She was all smiles and sparkly eyes. I was standing at a road junction near the railway station at Shepherdswell studying an Ordnance Survey map. I looked at her over the topContinue reading “Tractors, Marx and Sowing Seeds”