Mick Hartley

What's going on here? – on the corner of Gun Street, just south of Spitalfields Market:

A faux facade – with the new building hiding behind the old. Here's a side view:

Are they planning to knock down that frontage? – in which case why did they bother to keep it when the rest of the building was demolished. Or are they planning to put the windows back in? But then what do they do with that space in between? Or….is that it? Is this the finished article? – a kind of post-modern architectural joke. Can't work it out at all.

There's so much building work going on round here. The area's a mess. There's Artillery Passage just behind: part of Jack-the-Ripper London – his final victim, Mary Kelly, was butchered just yards from here – now spruced up a bit for the tourists: 

Then round the corner, this:

and a little further down there's Petticoat Lane Market, which may be lively, but is still a sprawling eyesore. Does anyone (Tower Hamlets) have a master plan, I wonder? – what the area'll look like when all the work's been done and the last bit of scaffolding's been cleared away? 

I suspect the scaffolding'll never be cleared away. Over to the east, by Hawksmoor's Christ Church, it's all early Georgian terraces on Fournier Street, with the echo of the Huguenot silk-weavers and the later Jewish immigrants, and Gilbert and George doing their trademark stained-glass turds, and the colour of Bangla Brick Lane further along. But this side of Commercial Street, nearer the City, it feels like one of those areas destined always to be a mess.

Meanwhile, up Commercial Street….non-Commercial House:

And off Great Eastern Street, the eyes have it:

With a red bike:

And a lost stranded red bus: