One of the pleasures of arriving at a port-city is the first impression, the immediate surfaces, the familiar-strangeness. The roll of the train into the station; cinematic movement, office blocks, bridges, viaducts the electrical infrastructure of the inter-city and suburban railways, glimpses of an earlier time, when capital took different forms, red brick buildings withContinue reading “Notes on Hamburg and its Housing”
Category Archives: Docks
The Situationist City
London can be rather fabulous on a Wednesday lunchtime, especially when toil is abandoned for a couple of weeks. I take the Crossrail to Liverpool Street and walk through the station. Down to London Wall and past the mysterious All Hallows church. There’s a cut through at Throgmorton Street and then Copthall Avenue. Uncorked hasContinue reading “The Situationist City”
Stepping Out
It is a peculiar sensation to feel as if stepping back into one’s own life. The recent past appears to have been the experience of another person, someone else, not me. There was a sense of a second phase. But a second phase of what exactly, unclear. It’s not as if I’ve been idle. AContinue reading “Stepping Out”
Sunday Morning, E15
The vote count for the 1892 General Election for the West Ham South constituency was held here (now the Old Town Hall, Stratford). When it was announced that Keir Hardie was the winner he went on to the balcony and addressed a crowd of between 15 – 20,000 people. “On taking his seat on 3Continue reading “Sunday Morning, E15”
Dover Western Docks Revival
Let us for a moment set aside technological determinism and instead consider technology as a determinant. The earliest archeological evidence for the wheelbarrow is in Chengdu in 118AD. It took about 1,000 years for wheelbarrows to make their way to medieval Europe. References to artefacts which could be wheelbarrows starts to appear around 1170. AnyoneContinue reading “Dover Western Docks Revival”
Commodity Fetishism 