27 October, 2013

chimney with weathered crimson bricks

Coming to the outskirts of Lille, I found the chimney of the old fabric factory rising into the sky, covered with weathered crimson bricks. I heard the factory was closed a long time ago, maybe for decades, hardly used for any business for a while. Then, when the town-council, some businessmen and developers somehow found and agreed with its potential, it was re-constructed or re-developed as a middle sized outlet-shopping mall, while being preserved it's old fashioned facade with the symbolic sky-high chimney. It was a decade ago, and on its grand opening day when the factory-mall was officially given a new life, I could imagine that a crowd of people around here were coming, walking and shopping like kids as if entering their dreamland for the first time in life.
 

Just several years later, I found people in here actually preferring to walk and window-shopping more slowly than used to be. As a consequence, several tenants had already closed its stores, and never comes new ones. Still the sky high chimney was there, and I could see it from my car window, while driving for a while to go home.

Here was the outskirts of Lille, France

19 October, 2013

inside the tree

The sky was becoming dark, and the fog was coming with light rain. So, we all missed orange and water blue in the twilight in the evening. At five o'clock, instead, the lights of myriad buildings around here came on, and these were just like numerous fireflies glowing in the sea of Tokyo city.
 

Inside the tower newly built a year ago, the interior was so chic that we all came to think that even the staff, the middle age woman, trying to clean up the floor of cafe area with a small vacuum chicly. Why we thought so? 'cause each staff wore a slightly loose uniform designed by a famous designer who someone said learnt his basic-style around Scandinavian countries.

Countless people kept coming to the tower just like rain falling endlessly tonight.

This tower was named "sky tree", and I was walking at the downtown area of Tokyo, while it was still drizzling.