Brick by Brick Lane

If you walk up Fashion Street, E1, by Brick Lane, you'll find these beautiful buildings, whose restoration was finally unveiled earlier this year. What I love about them is that they seem to be a cultural, geographical and, now, temporal crossover, as they look very much like the Victorian edifices you might see in Karachi, Pakistan, (the grander ones are referred to as Venetian Gothic, such as Frere Hall) except in this case the vernacular has been brought back to Britain. Also on Brick Lane, I enjoyed this latest piece by Stik:

Alien invasion thwarted

A couple of these have gone missing from Brick Lane in the last few days. According to the Space Invader website, there are more than 100 of the tiled extra terrestrials around London, though perhaps more are now on eBay?

I've picked up some street art myself in the past (deliberately left out by MisterMN – more of that another time), but these had become part of the environment. I doubt the council or developers can be blamed as the pieces had been up for some time. It's inevitable that street art will become a target as it becomes more collectable – a victim of its own success – but the loss of these likeable visitors does take some of the colour from the area.