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2010 is, we're told, the year of 3D television, so February 2010 was the month where I travelled to Vienna to see some of the new sets they'll be selling very soon. These are actually quite impressive, with the two caveats that they'll cost a fortune (in the region of £1500-2000) and there's very little to watch on them right now. And, obviously, the effect is somewhat better when you stack nine humongous sets on top of one another, like so:

But with that all dealt with I had three hours or so to see Vienna itself. Fortunately we were put up right in the middle of the city, at the rather posh Do and Co hotel, so I was able to stroll in a kind of circle around the town centre without wasting any time getting there in the first place.

The centre is dominated by the cathedral – huge, covered in scaffolding and with a remarkable roof that appears to have been made out of coloured Lego bricks. Past that, there are the usual shopping streets, stuffed full of horrible Mozart-themed tat shops and guarded by giant bears:

.. but then a block or so further and you hit the rather grand architecture. Incredibly grand buildings are to Vienna as fried chicken shops are to South London – one around every corner, and soon blending into one despite having actually quite different facades.

In fact, there are so many staggering bits of old architecture that people don't really seem to care – somebody was so nonplussed by this building and the statue in front of it that they saw fit to dump a huge ugly industrial generator there.

Note also the piles of snow: it was bitterly cold. Freezing slowly to death I headed further to Parliament and the Museums Quarter, which includes several apparently excellent art galleries placed around one square:

.. but it was cold, empty and desolate, and most of the galleries in the modern art museum were closed for rehanging. Not quite what I was hoping for.

Fortunately, there's one area in which Vienna can be guaranteed to excel: coffee and cake. Three of us took a trip to Café Central, apparently a favourite of Leon Trotsky, and stuffed down some of this:

And then it was time for the rush back to the airport, full of caffeine and cream, and a long time spent circling about London waiting for a landing slot at Heathrow. All in all, an interesting place – but if I ever go back I'll try to do so in summer and with time to check out the palaces properly. More photos here.

Too cold to run this weekend, so I took a walk up to Greenwich Park instead. The paths were treacherous, but the rose garden was pretty – a few flowers had survived, and a robin even popped in to complete the scene.

On a happier note, I've now finished testing Panasonic's DMC-GF1 – both written and video reviews will be online shortly. Will pop links up here, but in the meantime, here's Ralph taking a good look at the 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens.

Edit – video review is online here.

The Brunnen der Internationalen Freundschaft, photographed in 2006. Last time I went back this area was being redeveloped; not sure if the fountain survived.

Dropped into the Design Museum today for the Javier Mariscal exhibition. It's well worth seeing, with a good range of his work from sketches through to corporate identities and even a temple (!) built from his parts of his plastic shelving design. A couple of photos are on Flickr here. Mariscal is also conducting a performance at the BFI in November – details here.

Also on show is a retrospective of designs by the late Jan Kaplický, the architect of the bubble at Lord's Cricket Ground and the new Selfridges in Birmingham. Some of the models are baffling, and many look wildly unfeasible, but this model for a huge tower block is quite striking:

This photo only captures a small part of the building, which is strangely reminiscent of cold war television towers or the giant Arcology buildings you could construct in Sim City games. It alone is worth a visit. As the first floor of the museum is currently closed, admission to both costs just £6.

Entire set of photos here, or broken down by location here.

A few more here.

I spent Tuesday rushing to France and back on the Eurostar, attending a Dell press conference at Versailles. About three hours in I spotted this plaque: it turns out the hotel ballroom was used to draft the famous Treaty – now it's a site for business meetings.

At the end of the afternoon a few of us had an hour spare, so we went around the corner to the palace. It's predictably spectacular:

.. and the gardens are something else:

.. but sadly we had no time to do any more than take a quick glance around. At 7pm it was back in a taxi, back to the Gare du Nord, back on the Eurostar and back to London. Eighteen hours, about 1,000km, three press conferences, one interview, two news stories, three glasses of wine underneath the channel and twelve photos here. Not bad for one day.

Just down the road from Hither Green lies Kidbrooke, and what's left of the Ferrier Estate. Built in the 1960s-70s, it's now in the process of being "developed" – development, in this case, meaning knocking much of it down and starting again. Many of the buildings are now sitting empty, windows smashed out, Sky dishes aiming pointlessly up, wet curtains billowing in the wind. Plants are even beginning to grow into and over some blocks.

It's an interesting place. On one hand, its current state of delapidation is almost epic, and past residents have written of its numerous problems: crime, gangs, rats, water supply problems and ants (see comments here). The buildings, created from huge slabs of concrete, have not aged well, and have a depressingly monolithic look to rival the kind of Soviet housing you see in much of Eastern Europe.

But despite all that, take even a quick glance at what's left of the Ferrier Estate and you see what the GLC was aiming for when it constructed it. The huge low-rise blocks were to provide large quantities of much-needed social housing, set in landscaped grounds rather than rows of terraced blocks like those near Waterloo, and with communal spaces even above ground level courtesy of the walkways – a bit of classic modernism.

A huge boiler was to provide heat and hot water for all, and there were schools on-site. These pictures from the time show the estate as it was when newly constructed – it's unclear whether these were posed, but even if so you get the idea of what the GLC was aiming for.

And, of course, it all fell apart. The boiler system failed, the covered car park shown in the second photo above had to be removed for security reasons, and the open walkways were divided off. Now, 40 years on, the whole thing's about to be taken down.

With 20/20 hindsight it's easy to judge this kind of project harshly. It'll be interesting, though, to see what people are saying about the new, replacement housing that's due to be built after it's been up for 40 years – and if it even lasts that long.

The colour photos here were taken yesterday – more can be found in my Flickr set. The black-and-white photos were taken around the time the estate was built by the GLC Architects' Department, and are reproduced here from Iqbal Alam's excellent Flickr set, which also contains some excellent information about the Ferrier Estate and the GLC. These photos are presumably copyrighted, but it's unclear as to who owns those rights now.

Cats, flowers, cats, flowers. Need to photograph something new.