Emerging from Vauxhall station is to be switched rather rapidly from the modernism of electrical underground travel to…..what exactly? Wide six lane roads with cars moving in all directions. It is a giant conveyor belt of motorism and stretches all around the world. From the edge of the road it appears to be a swirlingContinue reading “The Hallucinatory Nature of the Expansion of Capital”
Category Archives: Housing
Ramsgate, the welfare state and a new born baby
Early Saturday morning. I’m talking to one of the people who works at the station. We are always comparing notes as to when we might be able to retire.‘I just want to go now’, she says, ‘I like my job, but there’s too much politics and too much unfairness’.I totally agree with her. And byContinue reading “Ramsgate, the welfare state and a new born baby”
Siedlung Schillerpark
Most of the good stuff about housing, urban topographies, planning, environments, living space has already been written. Jane Jacobs, Catherine Bauer, Christopher Alexander, Raymond Unwin, William Morris, Bruno Taut, Camillo Sitte and many others. I doubt anyone is going to improve much on that substantial mass of work. And if even 10 percent of whatContinue reading “Siedlung Schillerpark”
Pimlico, revisited
I walked through Pimlico several times earlier this year. Before more war had started. There was the brink of a new war then in those nervous days in January and early February. Threats and violations. No one was sure that it would happen. When it did, I remember thinking, ‘so this is how it starts’.Continue reading “Pimlico, revisited”
Radical St Pancras Walk – Resources
The walk started at the British Library. Not the Thatcher-ite edifice some imagine – she cut the budget so it was never completed to the original design. The British Library was built on land which was once the railway yards of St Pancras station. Those yards were created by demolishing densely packed slums. An estimatedContinue reading “Radical St Pancras Walk – Resources”
St Pancras – Labour vs Capital
At Kings Cross station militant suffragettes handed out leaflets to the crowds of football fans arriving in London for the 1908 FA Cup Final. There were sharp words at times. Local working class women joined in and said to the men that they should listen to the Suffragettes. ‘They’re the only ones who talk sense’.Continue reading “St Pancras – Labour vs Capital”
Radical St Pancras – Part 2
Friedrich Engels lived in 122 Regents Park Road from 1870 to 1895. Jenny Marx, the wife of Karl, had helped him house hunting. Jenny and Karl were frequent visitors, as were many members of the European revolutionary socialist movement. Wilhelm Liebknecht (‘Library’ as he was nick named by the Marx children), August Bebel, Karl Kautsky,Continue reading “Radical St Pancras – Part 2”
The quality without a name
In his book, ‘The Timeless Way of Building’, Christopher Alexander introduces the idea of ‘the quality without a name’. “There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a person, a town, a building or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named”. AlexanderContinue reading “The quality without a name”
Ships
Neues Frankfurt
The chronological sequence of German history from 1870 can be described as the rule of Bismark, unification of Germany, development of mass production and consumerism, (first large wave of housing building), autocratic rule of Kaiser Wilhelm II, imperialism, the development of the Social Democratic Party as a mass socialist organisation. That sequence stops with theContinue reading “Neues Frankfurt”
Cornucopia City 