It's one of my favorite places to spend time when in London. It's comfortable, clean, quiet, aesthetically striking, easy to loaf around at, and there's high brow art in numerous forms to enjoy – it's kinda like BBC Radio 3 if it were a neighborhood. It's also five minutes from the Elizabeth Line and the parking is good which is unusual for the City. It's strikingly non-commercial - there are no chains or even convenience stores there, though there is a fantastic music shop. It's one of those rare places you can feel more intelligent and cultured by merely being there.
I'd love to retire there when the kids are gone, although there are a lot of oddities about Barbican living to contend with that are probably more fun to read about than deal with for real.
simonw · 2h ago
"kinda like BBC Radio 3 if it were a neighborhood"
Thanks for that, put a smile on my face.
philipwhiuk · 30m ago
> It's also five minutes from the Elizabeth Line
And about 200ft. Such is the maze-like nature of the Barbican.
yardie · 1h ago
"There’s an underground parking garage for the residents, but half of it is empty and filled with 20-30-year-old cars whose owners are no longer known."
Years ago I bought a flat and it came with an underground parking garage. Once we were settled in I break the garage lock and inside was an old Peugot, cans of old motor oil, and all sorts of junk shoved in between the garage door cracks. It was hell to get rid of the thing. The tires were flat. No title meant no tow trucks wanted to touch it and no scrap yard was willing to accept it. After too many months I was able to get the city to declare the car derelict. And then I had to pay a scrap yard to accept it.
frereubu · 24m ago
The apartments are lovely, but the service charges are eye-watering, ranging from around £6,000 per year for a two-bedroom, to £14,400 for the more expensive ones:
And all are sold on that weird UK feudal relic, leaseholds, so you're just buying for a certain number of years - a couple of the ones above only have ~80 years remaining.
nbevans · 10m ago
6k is pretty typical for any premium apartments in London. That's actually pretty cheap for that location.
DrakeDeaton · 1h ago
Part of the thinking behind the Barbican's somewhat hidden entrances to the estate and tts maze-like layout was that they would reduce foot traffic, and it totally worked. Not many people use the public estate high-walks as a shortcut to get across the City. This has a wonderful effect wherein you're surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the City, while being just a touch insulated from it.
I lived there for the better part of a year and it completely changed my perspective on living in London. More city-life should be like the Barbican.
mjamil · 7m ago
It is utterly weird to me that so many commenters here appreciate the Barbican's aesthetics. To me, it is an ugly eyesore that's a legacy of the brutalist wave of the mid-20th century. I lived close to it (in Islington) for many months, and avoided walking through it to get to the City (where I worked).
oniony · 3h ago
So strange to talk about the Barbican Centre as a curiousity and to not mention the greenhouse! I used to work around the area and would take 'short cuts' from the Barbican tube station through the Barbican Centre to the City. I got lost many, many times, would end up in dead ends, or the other side of lakes to where I wanted to be. Or stuck behind a metal gate I could not open. The place often taunts you with a view of right where you want to be but from behind a thin metal fence or gate that requires a key or fob.
Anyhow, one day I went a different way and there was this massive, tropical greenhouse. Kinda hard to believe if you've ever seen the place.
Op. The greenhouse was closed, hence I hadn't a chance to photograph the place. There are too many details about that place, and I only shared the pieces that I've had chance to thoroughly visit.
oniony · 3h ago
Yeah, was not a criticism, merely a "and you think that's all weird, there's also this" kinda statement.
farslan · 3h ago
All good, thanks for mentioning it. I really want to visit it. The tour guide said it's open on certain days/hours.
mattkevan · 3h ago
I love the greenhouse, it’s one of my favourite places in London. Walking around it, exploring the different levels and observing the plants covering the concrete and ductwork makes me feel like I’m in some kind of retro-futuristic space arcology.
Such a contrast to the Sky Garden in the City which has all the charm of an airport departure lounge.
Angostura · 34m ago
Don’t forget the only reason the greenhouse (conservatory) exists is to camouflage the fly-tower from the theatre stage below!
halfdaft · 1m ago
It is! - except it's to hide the fly tower from the outside. The fly tower wasn't part of the original design. The first resident theatre company to be - the Royal Shakespeare company insisted upon one so the architects but came up with the genius idea of hiding it with a conservatory. I discovered this when working in the theatre space. I went exploring the fly tower (as you do) and opened a door at the top. I assumed I'd see some dark service corridor, but instead emerged into the warm, humid, nighttime air of a huge conservatory - it was easily the most magical architectural experience I've ever had.
stavros · 15m ago
Can you just walk in? Or do you need tickets? I see there are free tickets but they're sold out.
darajava · 11m ago
Yeah you need tickets for the greenhouse. They're usually sold out for a few days ahead. You don't need a ticket for the rest of it though!
stavros · 8m ago
Thank you!
rjmunro · 3h ago
I'm surprised the article doesn't mention the concert hall. It's one of London's most famous, with almost 2000 seats, and it's the London Symphony Orchestra's main home.
Until last lear, The Lead Developer conference (https://leaddev.com/) was held there, but it's moved to a larger venue for this year (I don't think the size of the main hall was the problem, it was the areas for break out etc.) They had a great talk about the history of the place: https://leaddev.com/leadership/you-are-here-the-story-of-the...
The Barbican Theatre is one of the London homes of the Royal Shakespeare Company, although they are looking to
sdenton4 · 2m ago
(Indeed, Belle and Sebastian's "If You're Feeling Sinister - Live at the Barbican" is my favorite B&S album, and is quite a lot better than the original studio recording. So the Barbican has an odd warm place in my heart despite knowing nothing more about it until today.)
(That same Live at the Barbican album is weirdly hard to find because it was a damned Apple Music exclusive. Travesty...)
libraryofbabel · 1h ago
The concert hall and theater is indeed the main reason most people who aren’t residents end up in the Barbican. When I lived in London it was almost a classical music rite of passage to get completely lost on the wrong concrete overhead walkway while rushing to get to an LSO concert there.
Unrelated, but recently the complex has been appearing in the general consciousness again as the excellent Apple TV series/spy novels Slow Horses (about a bunch of outcast MI5 agents) is set near there.
farslan · 3h ago
OP here. I hadn't a chance to visit it. Because of that, I also don't have any photos from there. But good point. I actually just received one of the books I recommend at the end of the blog post, which actually goes into the Barbican Event centre in more detail.
curiousgal · 2h ago
Too bad the staff of that hall are completely incompetent. Put me off going there ever again.
turnsout · 2h ago
What’s the story?
pkd · 4h ago
This was great and the photos were good too!
I have a similar sort of fascination with a structure closer to me: Habitat 67 in Montreal. I have at various points considered buying a unit there but practicality prevents me from doing so each time. I don't know how long I'll resist.
Thanks for reminding me of this cool building --- I just updated the Wikipedia article with an infobox and a photo that I took in 2019.
porphyra · 22m ago
I visited outside it twice but they are very strict with protecting the privacy of the residents, so you aren't allowed in. I could only take some photos from street level outside.
JimDabell · 3h ago
Habitat 67 reminds me of The Interlace in Singapore. I’m guessing The Interlace took some inspiration from it.
Curious, what are the practical concerns? The place looks fantastic to me!
I really miss more bold architectural and city planning experiments. Like, I get it, if it’s a flop, it’s a pretty expensive one. But still, it feels like the design-space there is just really under-explored.
Maybe there’s some AI-driven simulation way to explore the design-space and arrive at viable solutions before committing too much funds.
I was reading this post and thinking, huh, this would be a good set for a Coruscant shot in Andor, and sure enough ...
fmajid · 3h ago
The Scarif transport network scenes in Rogue One were shot at London's Canary Wharf Underground station, however.
SideburnsOfDoom · 3h ago
That and it's also in the spy thriller series Slow Horses
which is good too, it's a mix of Black comedy and spy tension.
ukoki · 2h ago
Michael Fassbender's character has an apartment there in The Agency as well
tialaramex · 1h ago
Living in the Barbican seems so very typical for a spy that it'd be like a give away.
James Bond obviously doesn't live there, but I can imagine any number of John le Carré's later characters (the early novels are set before it was built) would make sense.
Grosvenor · 1h ago
Don't they all live in Dolphin house? I swear Neil Burnside did.
vr46 · 42m ago
I have many memories of barrelling through on skates with friends, and one of my favourite memories is of filming a mate skating through some flaming cones that another friend had made, basically mini molotov cocktails of small bottles filled with paraffin, we set them in a long line outside the church opposite the water and spent an hour skating around and filming ourselves. This was pre-2001, I cannot believe some of the shit we used to do.
Elsewhere in the place, I have loved going to exhibitions, theatre plays, gigs and the cinema. It's a one-stop cultural hub that evokes the glamour of flying in the olden days.
wgrover · 3h ago
Here's a cross-section through the theatre portion of the Barbican showing the complexity of the engineering:
One thing that I think is underappreciated as a distinguishing factor of brutalism is how three-dimensional it is.
Whether its the Barbican, or "Grad Center" at Brown University, there are all sorts of elevated walkways that you can see from other levels, defying "every floor is like every other floor" expectations.
I think I have vague memories of when being a small child, being filled with wonder at various municipal buildings that did this. Though my memory hazy and I cannot remember the specific buildings.
bobthepanda · 1h ago
These became less popular over time due to cost and safety reasons.
Interbuilding passageways complicate future renovation and redevelopment, and spreading eyes on the street thinly makes all walking areas harder to secure.
grumpy-de-sre · 3h ago
One of the very few places in London that I ever felt truly at peace.
I think the heavy maze like structure was incredibly effective at blocking out the sound of the city and the water features / conservatory made it an amazing place to chill out for a relaxing lunch.
Not quite cyberpunk, not quite solarpunk but somewhere in between and utterly unique.
hnlmorg · 3h ago
I used to work on a top floor of the building next to it so had a first class view of the estate. Been there a few times and a friend used to live there too.
He would rave about the place but I’m not a fan of it personally.
Aesthetically it’s out of place and (in my personal opinion) a bit of an eye sore.
The maze like design seems fun at first but it’s less amusing if you’re the one who’s actually lost in there and have somewhere to be.
The apartments are small and impossible to get the temperature right (too hot in summer, too cold in winter).
But because its iconic people still pay an obscene amount to live there.
The on-site amenities are pretty good, but its central London, you’re not far from literally anything you could imagine or desire. So I’m not sure that’s as much a selling point now than it was when the estate was built.
It’s one of those places you’d have to really love in spite of its warts because it’s so impractical by modern standards.
dreghgh · 1h ago
> The on-site amenities are pretty good, but its central London, you’re not far from literally anything you could imagine or desire.
This is totally inaccurate. It's the business district. If not for the Barbican, the nearest serious art gallery, repertory cinema, music auditorium, are all around half an hour away.
NoboruWataya · 14m ago
Half an hour is pretty much nothing in London. But if you factor public transport or cycling into the mix then there are loads of places you can get to in less than half an hour. For example about 10 minutes cycle to the south you have the Southbank Centre, BFI, Tate Modern etc.
hnlmorg · 1h ago
I know the area well. It’s actually more like 15 minutes. Quicker if you take the tube.
But even half an hour isn’t a long walk. ;)
dreghgh · 33m ago
Go for it, which major art galleries, auditoriums and cinemas are 15 minutes from the Barbican?
hnlmorg · 15m ago
Tottenham Court Rd is 10 mins by bike, 30mins to walk and less than 15 mins by tube.
It’s also a route I’ve done often, hence how I know.
And if you cannot find an art gallery, auditorium nor cinema in Soho then you’re doing something very wrong.
philipwhiuk · 27m ago
I mean there's a cinema, art gallery and auditorium in the Barbican Centre itself.
In theory Leicester Square is a 15 minute drive. In practice you'd have to be mad to drive yourself but you could Uber it.
sagacity · 3h ago
What a coincidence, I just visited last week. The article's comment about it being hard to navigate is completely accurate but I found it to be fun. You may be getting lost, but there's always an interesting view towards another part of the building enticing you to go there... It's almost like the design of Breath of the Wild or something.
codeulike · 43m ago
There's also the Barbican Centre that a cinema/theatre/concert hall, they have some great stuff there
Always great to see more people who love the Barbican as much as I do. A gloriously inventive space that feels like it comes from an alternate timeline. There’s also an integrated complex including a theatre housing the RSC, a concert hall that hosts the LSO, a library and I think a cinema.
Fun fact: a good chunk of the video to “As It Was” was shot there.
trainyperson · 1h ago
The Barbican is one of my favorite places on Earth and this post in a simple way does such a good job of capturing the beauty and wonder I associate with it. Others have mentioned the greenhouse and the concert hall; I’ll the exhibition space which consistently hosts great exhibits including the only good AI-themed museum exhibit I’ve ever seen (and it was back in 2019).
It looks a lot like Mass Effect Citadel, with the water reservoir in the middle. I'm surprised to not found some link documenting if it was inspired by it.
Reason077 · 4h ago
There’s a pretty great cinema and theatre / concert hall complex in the basement too, which I can recommend visiting. Oh, and a tropical garden (Barbican Conservatory)!
tetris11 · 4h ago
When people point to examples of bad brutalist architecture, I point them to the Barbican as a beautiful counter-example.
munificent · 3h ago
My appreciation of Brutalist architecture seems to be in direct proportion to the number of plants it incorporates.
A Brutalist building with zero plants looks like a totalitarian prison hellscape designed to destroy your soul before it destroys your body.
A Brutalist building surrounded by trees with every nook containing greenery and vines dangling down looks like some kind of idyllic Star Wars planet populated by fuzzy hobbit-like creatures.
I'm not sure why I find this effect so strong. Perhaps because flat gray concrete is aesthetically ambiguous. When paired with greenery, it looks like stone. In it's absence, it looks like industrial mechanism.
chilmers · 2h ago
Agreed. I think greenery and water enhances most architectural styles, but Brutalism is the only one that absolutely _requires_ it. I wonder how differently the perception of the style would be if the Brutalist estates in the UK that became a byword for grimness and ugliness had been embowered and properly maintained by their housing groups and local councils.
empath75 · 1h ago
With greenery on it, the concrete takes on the aspect of a cliff or a rock face, so it feels more they homes were carved out of stone, than poured out of a truck.
Centre Point and it's lesser known baby brother One Kemble Street are pretty attractive buildings too though the former has the characteristic brutalist issue of not being great at street level. Depending on where you approach it from, the Barbican can have that issue too...
ddalex · 3h ago
The Brunswick Centre is one of my favourite parts of central London
ninalanyon · 3h ago
Exceptions prove the rule. Prove means test.
gwern · 1h ago
Note that he did not use the expression you are criticizing him for misusing.
The rule is the rule, and exceptions are the exception. Exceptions do not make the rule, by definition, so if your only defense of Brutalism is to say 'look at this one exception out of the tens of thousands that got built, which doesn't suck!', then you have conceded the point about Brutalism sucking.
probabletrain · 4h ago
> all the photos where shoot with the Leica M11 + 35mm Summilux FLE
These photos look great, but I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly why.
The Barbican certainly looks better here than from what I remember of seeing it through the naked eye.
Karrot_Kream · 2h ago
Whether this was done on-camera or in post, there's color grading happening here. The moody, almost film-like quality present in these pictures is also really popular in high production TV shows right now. Also a good eye for fun compositions, like the shot with the wall/barrier present in the left to offer the feeling of being closed or restricted.
Notice how the shadows are somewhat teal-tinged and the contrast is toned down. There may or may not be some grain or vignetting added in post as well. There are Lightroom color profiles that can get this sort of color feel on application. But the compositions and natural lighting are pure photographer skill to chase.
munificent · 3h ago
Good camera + good lens + good photographer + good processing.
Photography is a deeper, more subtle art than a lot of people realize. Two people can take a picture in the exact same location and time and get wildly different results.
mullingitover · 4h ago
Not mentioned in the article, but this was what J. G. Ballard's novel (and later film) High Rise was based on.
phoh · 1h ago
i think that was Trellick Tower, by Ernő Goldfinger (who incidentally the Bond villan was named after)
Trellick is what people film when they can't get the Barbican to work (bluntly)
graemep · 2h ago
I have lived there many years ago and it was amazing.
Theatre, concert hall, library, cinema and a few other things in the building. well kept gardens. Friendly and peaceful.
SirFatty · 4h ago
"There’s an underground parking garage for the residents, but half of it is empty and filled with 20-30-year-old cars whose owners are no longer known."
Of all the great information, that's the bit that sticks in my mind for some reason. I'd like to pics of that...
derriz · 3h ago
(Not very) interesting that the author of the piece refers to it as "Barbican" while I've never heard it referred to without the definite article - i.e. "The Barbican". Is there any significance to this?
cal85 · 2h ago
The building complex is always called “the Barbican”, but the surrounding map area and its tube station are named just “Barbican”. Also, the arts theatre place within the Barbican seems to be officially named “Barbican Centre” (but people always say “going to see X at the Barbican”).
derriz · 15m ago
That makes sense. I still find hard to imagine saying something like "I live in Barbican" if I didn't live in _The_ Barbican. But going to "Barbican" if traveling by tube would be obvious.
farslan · 3h ago
You’re right. I submitted it as The Barbican here, because that felt more natural for me. I just updated the title of my blog post to The Barbican as well
Karrot_Kream · 2h ago
> Leica M11 + 35mm Summilux FLE
I've never shot Leica. Is this color grading something you can pull straight out of the camera, or is this applied in post?
(Also wow that is expensive kit.)
farslan · 2h ago
People always ask which camera or lens I use, hence I added it upfront. Leica's are expensive I agree. It was a dream of mine to use it though for almost two decades. I finally was in a position to get it three years ago.
To your question, the RAW's, unprocessed files are not like this from a Leica. You need to color grade (photographers say "post processing"). Color grading is used mostly for Video. In Photography, there are a lot of other things, it's mostly about light, not color. Highlights, Shadows, Contrast, Blacks/Whites etc.. Of course colors are also very important.
If you want good colors straight out of the camera, you could look into FujiFilm.
Karrot_Kream · 2h ago
> If you want good colors straight out of the camera, you could look into FujiFilm.
This is why I was asking. I've never shot Leica so was curious if Leica worked like Fuji and offered interesting color profiles in body.
> Leica's are expensive I agree. It was a dream of mine to use it though for almost two decades. I finally was in a position to get it three years ago.
Yeah sorry I don't mean to throw shade with that comment. Your compositions are great and interesting and your moments seem deliberate. Artistry went into this, these are good photos :)
Etheryte · 2h ago
That's exactly why I carry Fuji, but at the same time, their camera lineup is all a bit wonky. The features are split between a number of models, but none of them carry a good subset for me. I wish they made an X100VI with a removable lens, so in essence an X-Pro4 or similar, but it doesn't look like that's even on their roadmap. I like the form factor, dig that it has IBIS, but really wish I could slap different glass on it.
EbNar · 2h ago
That's amusing... I learned about this building during my english proficiency exam, as the "listening" part narrated its story.
manmal · 2h ago
Having watched Slow Horses recently, I immediately recognized the building. My employer‘s HQ is near Barbican too, such an underrated part of the city.
arnab_optimatik · 3h ago
The events, cultural activities and especially some of the curated exhibitions at the Barbican have been outstanding. Highly recommend to anyone visiting London.
KaiserPro · 3h ago
RANT ALERT:
The barbican is odd, mainly because its the only brutalist "council housing estate" that actually mostly worked as intended[1]
If you compare the layout/style to say the haygate estate (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13092349 where attack the block was filmed) or the lesser known aylesbury estate, its more enclosed, but no less brutalist.
What is different is that unlike the southwark estates, it always had the original tenancy requirements upheld (either by tenant action, location or happenstance.) [2]
This meant that it didn't have the massive abandonment in the 90s, left to rot throughout the 00s. The quality of the haygate estate was actually pretty high, secure entry, gardens for the low rise, district heating, trees and playgrounds.
What was fucked up was that the heygate was a dumping ground for undesirables. this mean a spiral of drugs, crime and antisocial behaviour. The barbican escaped most of this because people were too fucking posh.
The social life of the barbican was upheld because of the huge amounts of money poured into the cultural centres that are hidden (and I mean hidden, the place is a fucking impossible maze) Most of the tenant social clubs were disbanded on the other estates, and the halls sold off or leased out to businesses.
In many way, the barbican isn't a great estate in terms of building quality. Its the same as any >60s council property. They all had to be big enough, have a separate kitchen and decent storage.
[1] well its not a mixed class housing estate, its all full of posh design types, and a handful of tenants left over from the 80s
[2] to get a council house, you had to be of good standing, and have a job. It wasn't a place to dumo drugadicts or problem families.
TLDR: the barbican is decent housing because it was reasonably well maintained, and wasn't filled with families in distress, or habitual criminals. We need to build more council estates to the same standard, with the same rules as the 60s.
philipwhiuk · 24m ago
Heygate is the answer to the question "can we solve a social problem with a building". The answer is no.
Yup. "vandalism, overcrowding and poor maintenance", as a mechanic would say: "there's your problem mate."
eilzo · 2h ago
The Barbican was never built as social housing - the intended occupants were always central London professional workers and they charged market rates.
notahacker · 1h ago
Which in a way actually does align with the OP's view on why it never became known as a dangerous sketchy place.
Much more thought gone into the aesthetics of the Barbican than the Heygate Estate though, which is why the Heygate Estate was the one that ended up as every film scout's first choice of "scary, deprived place" even though it reportedly actually wasn't bad by the standards of south London postwar estates. And that's before taking into account the Barbican's arts facilities and all the money spent maintaining its communcal areas
empath75 · 1h ago
Yeah, there's an _artistry_ to the barbican that isn't captured by just listing off the features of the complex and apartments. Whoever designed it had excellent _taste_.
KaiserPro · 10m ago
I mean kinda.
But a _lot_ of council estates were well designed, but suffered from failed assumptions. The underground parking in the barbican for example was the same design that cause so many issues for estates elsewhere. They were hidden and that meant crime, unless there was tight access control.
https://modernistpilgrimage.com/2015/10/18/trellick-tower-lo... The trellick tower is fucking ugly on the outside, just like the barbican, but even the trellick has some smashing design features. Like most estates at the time, the three bed flats had an upstairs. Not only that, they were bright! Had a balcony.
The difference between the trellick and the barbican is the barbican had middle class people growing plants on the balcony. Until the hipsters moved in, the trellick just had shit.
I think the biggest thing to take away is that for a long while council housing _had_ to be better than private. It was partly slum clearance, partly vote winning, partly "you fought for this in the war" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Morris_Committee has the general plan.
Separate kitchens, storage, decent square footage, working heating as a _minimum_ something which even 500k flats struggle to do now.
scoofy · 3h ago
I'm glad people appreciate the building. You all can have it... it's just not for me.
globular-toast · 54m ago
Odd use of "nit". Generally one nitpicks someone else's work, but I guess you can do you own nitpicking? Don't think this is common, though.
petepete · 7m ago
For this crowd, maybe "all the photos where shoot with the Leica M11 + 35mm Summilux FLE btw" might be more apt.
Oh that the was fascinating, too. From visiting more than a decade ago, I understand that most of the permanent population of Whittier lives there (except for some hotel employees) and that they have an underground passage connecting it with the school building opposite (so students in winter can get there without putting on a coat).
SideburnsOfDoom · 3h ago
FYI, there's also a conservatory (A glass roofed garden room) on level 3
I was fortunate enough to be in there recently.
drcongo · 3h ago
Glad you enjoyed your visit, lovely photos too.
farslan · 3h ago
Thank you!
projektfu · 3h ago
No, it's definitely ugly and an abomination. One of London's worst and probably, unfortunately, historically protected.
philipwhiuk · 16m ago
It's far from the worst, but it's going up the list because we keep knocking them down.
eilzo · 2h ago
To each their own :). One of my favourite places in London.
I'd love to retire there when the kids are gone, although there are a lot of oddities about Barbican living to contend with that are probably more fun to read about than deal with for real.
Thanks for that, put a smile on my face.
And about 200ft. Such is the maze-like nature of the Barbican.
Years ago I bought a flat and it came with an underground parking garage. Once we were settled in I break the garage lock and inside was an old Peugot, cans of old motor oil, and all sorts of junk shoved in between the garage door cracks. It was hell to get rid of the thing. The tires were flat. No title meant no tow trucks wanted to touch it and no scrap yard was willing to accept it. After too many months I was able to get the city to declare the car derelict. And then I had to pay a scrap yard to accept it.
https://themodernhouse.com/sales-list/thomas-more-house-ii
https://themodernhouse.com/sales-list/Lauderdale-Tower-II
https://themodernhouse.com/sales-list/willoughby-house
https://themodernhouse.com/sales-list/ben-jonson-house-iii
And all are sold on that weird UK feudal relic, leaseholds, so you're just buying for a certain number of years - a couple of the ones above only have ~80 years remaining.
I lived there for the better part of a year and it completely changed my perspective on living in London. More city-life should be like the Barbican.
Anyhow, one day I went a different way and there was this massive, tropical greenhouse. Kinda hard to believe if you've ever seen the place.
https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2025/event/visit-the-co...
Such a contrast to the Sky Garden in the City which has all the charm of an airport departure lounge.
Until last lear, The Lead Developer conference (https://leaddev.com/) was held there, but it's moved to a larger venue for this year (I don't think the size of the main hall was the problem, it was the areas for break out etc.) They had a great talk about the history of the place: https://leaddev.com/leadership/you-are-here-the-story-of-the...
The Barbican Theatre is one of the London homes of the Royal Shakespeare Company, although they are looking to
(That same Live at the Barbican album is weirdly hard to find because it was a damned Apple Music exclusive. Travesty...)
Unrelated, but recently the complex has been appearing in the general consciousness again as the excellent Apple TV series/spy novels Slow Horses (about a bunch of outcast MI5 agents) is set near there.
I have a similar sort of fascination with a structure closer to me: Habitat 67 in Montreal. I have at various points considered buying a unit there but practicality prevents me from doing so each time. I don't know how long I'll resist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67
https://www.architectural-review.com/today/the-interlace-in-...
I really miss more bold architectural and city planning experiments. Like, I get it, if it’s a flop, it’s a pretty expensive one. But still, it feels like the design-space there is just really under-explored.
Maybe there’s some AI-driven simulation way to explore the design-space and arrive at viable solutions before committing too much funds.
One can dream.
I was reading this post and thinking, huh, this would be a good set for a Coruscant shot in Andor, and sure enough ...
which is good too, it's a mix of Black comedy and spy tension.
James Bond obviously doesn't live there, but I can imagine any number of John le Carré's later characters (the early novels are set before it was built) would make sense.
Elsewhere in the place, I have loved going to exhibitions, theatre plays, gigs and the cinema. It's a one-stop cultural hub that evokes the glamour of flying in the olden days.
https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/5w9ep7/cross_...
Whether its the Barbican, or "Grad Center" at Brown University, there are all sorts of elevated walkways that you can see from other levels, defying "every floor is like every other floor" expectations.
I think I have vague memories of when being a small child, being filled with wonder at various municipal buildings that did this. Though my memory hazy and I cannot remember the specific buildings.
Interbuilding passageways complicate future renovation and redevelopment, and spreading eyes on the street thinly makes all walking areas harder to secure.
I think the heavy maze like structure was incredibly effective at blocking out the sound of the city and the water features / conservatory made it an amazing place to chill out for a relaxing lunch.
Not quite cyberpunk, not quite solarpunk but somewhere in between and utterly unique.
He would rave about the place but I’m not a fan of it personally.
Aesthetically it’s out of place and (in my personal opinion) a bit of an eye sore.
The maze like design seems fun at first but it’s less amusing if you’re the one who’s actually lost in there and have somewhere to be.
The apartments are small and impossible to get the temperature right (too hot in summer, too cold in winter).
But because its iconic people still pay an obscene amount to live there.
The on-site amenities are pretty good, but its central London, you’re not far from literally anything you could imagine or desire. So I’m not sure that’s as much a selling point now than it was when the estate was built.
It’s one of those places you’d have to really love in spite of its warts because it’s so impractical by modern standards.
This is totally inaccurate. It's the business district. If not for the Barbican, the nearest serious art gallery, repertory cinema, music auditorium, are all around half an hour away.
But even half an hour isn’t a long walk. ;)
It’s also a route I’ve done often, hence how I know.
And if you cannot find an art gallery, auditorium nor cinema in Soho then you’re doing something very wrong.
In theory Leicester Square is a 15 minute drive. In practice you'd have to be mad to drive yourself but you could Uber it.
https://www.barbican.org.uk/
Fun fact: a good chunk of the video to “As It Was” was shot there.
For those interested / invested, they recently launched a Barbican renewal project: https://www.barbican.org.uk/our-story/press-room/barbican-un...
A Brutalist building with zero plants looks like a totalitarian prison hellscape designed to destroy your soul before it destroys your body.
A Brutalist building surrounded by trees with every nook containing greenery and vines dangling down looks like some kind of idyllic Star Wars planet populated by fuzzy hobbit-like creatures.
I'm not sure why I find this effect so strong. Perhaps because flat gray concrete is aesthetically ambiguous. When paired with greenery, it looks like stone. In it's absence, it looks like industrial mechanism.
The rule is the rule, and exceptions are the exception. Exceptions do not make the rule, by definition, so if your only defense of Brutalism is to say 'look at this one exception out of the tens of thousands that got built, which doesn't suck!', then you have conceded the point about Brutalism sucking.
These photos look great, but I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly why.
The Barbican certainly looks better here than from what I remember of seeing it through the naked eye.
Notice how the shadows are somewhat teal-tinged and the contrast is toned down. There may or may not be some grain or vignetting added in post as well. There are Lightroom color profiles that can get this sort of color feel on application. But the compositions and natural lighting are pure photographer skill to chase.
Photography is a deeper, more subtle art than a lot of people realize. Two people can take a picture in the exact same location and time and get wildly different results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trellick_Tower
https://architectureau.com/articles/the-brutality-of-vertica...
Theatre, concert hall, library, cinema and a few other things in the building. well kept gardens. Friendly and peaceful.
Of all the great information, that's the bit that sticks in my mind for some reason. I'd like to pics of that...
I've never shot Leica. Is this color grading something you can pull straight out of the camera, or is this applied in post?
(Also wow that is expensive kit.)
To your question, the RAW's, unprocessed files are not like this from a Leica. You need to color grade (photographers say "post processing"). Color grading is used mostly for Video. In Photography, there are a lot of other things, it's mostly about light, not color. Highlights, Shadows, Contrast, Blacks/Whites etc.. Of course colors are also very important.
If you want good colors straight out of the camera, you could look into FujiFilm.
This is why I was asking. I've never shot Leica so was curious if Leica worked like Fuji and offered interesting color profiles in body.
> Leica's are expensive I agree. It was a dream of mine to use it though for almost two decades. I finally was in a position to get it three years ago.
Yeah sorry I don't mean to throw shade with that comment. Your compositions are great and interesting and your moments seem deliberate. Artistry went into this, these are good photos :)
The barbican is odd, mainly because its the only brutalist "council housing estate" that actually mostly worked as intended[1]
If you compare the layout/style to say the haygate estate (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13092349 where attack the block was filmed) or the lesser known aylesbury estate, its more enclosed, but no less brutalist.
What is different is that unlike the southwark estates, it always had the original tenancy requirements upheld (either by tenant action, location or happenstance.) [2]
This meant that it didn't have the massive abandonment in the 90s, left to rot throughout the 00s. The quality of the haygate estate was actually pretty high, secure entry, gardens for the low rise, district heating, trees and playgrounds.
What was fucked up was that the heygate was a dumping ground for undesirables. this mean a spiral of drugs, crime and antisocial behaviour. The barbican escaped most of this because people were too fucking posh.
The social life of the barbican was upheld because of the huge amounts of money poured into the cultural centres that are hidden (and I mean hidden, the place is a fucking impossible maze) Most of the tenant social clubs were disbanded on the other estates, and the halls sold off or leased out to businesses.
In many way, the barbican isn't a great estate in terms of building quality. Its the same as any >60s council property. They all had to be big enough, have a separate kitchen and decent storage.
[1] well its not a mixed class housing estate, its all full of posh design types, and a handful of tenants left over from the 80s
[2] to get a council house, you had to be of good standing, and have a job. It wasn't a place to dumo drugadicts or problem families.
TLDR: the barbican is decent housing because it was reasonably well maintained, and wasn't filled with families in distress, or habitual criminals. We need to build more council estates to the same standard, with the same rules as the 60s.
See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YqP21MQKvA
Much more thought gone into the aesthetics of the Barbican than the Heygate Estate though, which is why the Heygate Estate was the one that ended up as every film scout's first choice of "scary, deprived place" even though it reportedly actually wasn't bad by the standards of south London postwar estates. And that's before taking into account the Barbican's arts facilities and all the money spent maintaining its communcal areas
But a _lot_ of council estates were well designed, but suffered from failed assumptions. The underground parking in the barbican for example was the same design that cause so many issues for estates elsewhere. They were hidden and that meant crime, unless there was tight access control.
https://modernistpilgrimage.com/2015/10/18/trellick-tower-lo... The trellick tower is fucking ugly on the outside, just like the barbican, but even the trellick has some smashing design features. Like most estates at the time, the three bed flats had an upstairs. Not only that, they were bright! Had a balcony.
The difference between the trellick and the barbican is the barbican had middle class people growing plants on the balcony. Until the hipsters moved in, the trellick just had shit.
https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/ has some brilliant insight into council housing, the history, the plans and lots and lots of pictures.
I think the biggest thing to take away is that for a long while council housing _had_ to be better than private. It was partly slum clearance, partly vote winning, partly "you fought for this in the war" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Morris_Committee has the general plan.
Separate kitchens, storage, decent square footage, working heating as a _minimum_ something which even 500k flats struggle to do now.
I was fortunate enough to be in there recently.