Photos

Sorry Mark (Skorj), another location inspired title, but this time at least it's from a good film. In fact until recently attending a meeting in Marne-La-Vallee, about 25km east of Paris, I'd always assumed that the headquarters of the nightmarish bureaucracy in this fantasy were from Terry Gilliam's imagination. The intimidating neo-classicalism being a perfect expression of the inhuman state machine, and just the kind of thing he might have dreamed up. It is, however, a real building, a block flats in a Parisian overspill satelite town, and a building of such breathtaking ugliness that it's almost beautiful, in the way that Stalin's Seven Sisters in Moscow are.

What's amazing from a British perspective is how well cared for the building and it's surroundings are. In the UK this kind of place would be set in grounds filled with litter, and display many broken windows. Not here though, maybe the French are better at living in flats than we are.

Just as I raised my camera to take one of the interior shots a guy on the walkway shouted at me 'non', before disappearing from view, maybe he thought I was from Central Services.