Last night I was given the opportunity to go to the top of Strata SE1 and i certainly grabbed it with both hands. I took the opportunity to take pictures of the amazing views over central London (from Wembley Stadium to the Olympic Stadium via the Emirates) from the view terrace on the 42nd floor but also some of the power plant one level higher.
The picture above (of the Elephand and Castle) is a slightly doctored version of one of those pictures, using the fake tilt shift technique.
All the pictures can be found here.
Last night I attended a lecture by local historian Stephen Humphrey who discussed the general history of the Elephant & Castle, focussing more particularly on what he called its heyday (between 1850 and 1940). This is part of a week-long art project ( The Elephant Project ) hosted in an empty unit on the first floor of the infamous shopping centre, aiming to chart some of the changes currently happening to the area. When an historian starts talking about the Elephant and Castle, there is one subject he can not possibly avoid, even if he wanted to. Indeed my unsuspecting announcement on Facebook that I was attending such talk prompted a few people to ask the dreaded question: Where does the name of the area come from, for realz? Panoramic view of the Elephant and Castle around 1960/61. Those of us less badly informed than the rest have long discarded the theory that the name comes from the linguistic deformation of "Infanta de Castille", a name which would have become at...
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