Glad you enjoyed your visit, lovely photos too.
Thank you!
The Barbican
41–50 of 263 posts
Re: The Barbican
#42RANT 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 estat…
The Barbican was never built as social housing - the intended occupants were always central London professional workers and they charged market rates.
Re: The Barbican
#43No, it's definitely ugly and an abomination. One of London's worst and probably, unfortunately, historically protected.
To each their own :). One of my favourite places in London.
Re: The Barbican
#44(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?
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”).
Re: The Barbican
#45Possibly getting some more attention now because of some scenes from Andor 2 that were shot there: https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/1kb8k4u/lloyds_of_l...
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.
Michael Fassbender's character has an apartment there in The Agency as well
Re: The Barbican
#46It'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 conven…
"kinda like BBC Radio 3 if it were a neighborhood"
Thanks for that, put a smile on my face.
Re: The Barbican
#47Having watched Slow Horses recently, I immediately recognized the building. My employer‘s HQ is near Barbican too, such an underrated part of the city.
Re: The Barbican
#48I'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 tal…
Too bad the staff of that hall are completely incompetent. Put me off going there ever again.
Re: The Barbican
#49That's amusing... I learned about this building during my english proficiency exam, as the "listening" part narrated its story.
Re: The Barbican
#50When people point to examples of bad brutalist architecture, I point them to the Barbican as a beautiful counter-example.
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…
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.