If you wanna get some more footage of the buildings and inhabitants, I can recommend checking out Bêka & Lemoine's "Barbicania" --- https://vimeo.com/ondemand/barbicania
This site also seems to have lots of background info and details on various aspects of the buildings, though I haven't explored in depth --- https://www.barbicanliving.co.uk
petercooper 17 hours ago [-]
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.
freyfogle 11 hours ago [-]
I lived there for three years, rented a flat. Living in the Barbican was fantastic, livign in my flat was not fantastic. I used to joke it was a time machine to 1965. There was not only no dishwasher, there was literally no space for a dishwasher. Day one that seems funny, a few days later less so. I was spending a fortune in rent to spend 30 minutes every day handwashing my dishes. I did know people who had bought and renovated, they had amazing places. Oddly on my hall of 10 there were 10 flats of which 4 were empty. I don't mean someone just came occasionally I mean 100% empty with no furniture, with rich people just using it as an investment. Overall though was a greart experience, it's a fantasic place.
rowanajmarshall 2 hours ago [-]
> There was not only no dishwasher, there was literally no space for a dishwasher.
This is just London, out of the 8 years I've spent here, 3 of them were spent with a dishwasher. Tbh I've got a dishwasher now and barely use it.
pbalau 9 hours ago [-]
> I was spending a fortune in rent to spend 30 minutes every day handwashing my dishes.
Did you used to cook for the seven dwarves and their extended families, every day?
freyfogle 2 hours ago [-]
not seven, but yes, I had two small children at the time
talldan 4 hours ago [-]
> There was not only no dishwasher, there was literally no space for a dishwasher.
This is quite common for older places in the UK. Some places might have been updated to allow for a dishwasher, but there are probably rules against that in the Barbican.
freyfogle 57 minutes ago [-]
To my knowledge there are no rules against it, it is just a major and expensive plumbing project requiring redoing the whole kitchen. And so as a landlord why bother, you will always find someone willing to rent, no matter how unlivable the place. This dynamic was hardly unique to the Barbican, it was the reality of being a tenant in London, and ultimately one of the reasons I left. London's housing stock is just terrible compared to every other city I've lived in.
pledg 14 minutes ago [-]
I’ve lived in 4 different flats in the Barbican and they all had a dishwasher. I think only the studios you’d have a problem finding space for one. Of course in the others it is a preference whether you want to lose space for other things or not. It is not a lot of extra plumbing. It is usually when they want to preserve the original kitchen (or a cheap landlord as you suggest - although all the ones I had there were great)
fennecfoxy 25 minutes ago [-]
Idk I find the area dirty & busy/litter everywhere, etc. But then many parts of London are like that compared to NZ (where we generally take care of the place better).
It's not so bad once you head out into the counties either I suppose.
simonw 15 hours ago [-]
"kinda like BBC Radio 3 if it were a neighborhood"
Thanks for that, put a smile on my face.
tshanmu 3 hours ago [-]
nice analogy comparing it to BBC Radio 3- if you/someone knows which neighbourhood would be like BBC Radio 4? I find R3 too high brow for me - Radio 4 seems more accessible :)
philipwhiuk 13 hours ago [-]
> It's also five minutes from the Elizabeth Line
And about 200ft. Such is the maze-like nature of the Barbican.
zeristor 12 hours ago [-]
Actually the Barbican station has a lift that goes to the Elizabeth line at the far end.
pledg 8 hours ago [-]
It also depends where you are in the Barbican. It spans between the Barbican station and Moorgate. If you are at the latter you can enter Elizabeth line from there too.
4 hours ago [-]
yardie 14 hours 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.
rtpg 10 hours ago [-]
I _really_ appreciate Tokyo's system of basically forcing you to affirmatively declare your parking spot when you buy a car, on top of the usual "pay extra rent to have a parking space" thing that happens in many spots.
While it doesn't stop cars from being abandoned "randomly", just the entire principle of having a paper trail for these things and creating a bunch of incentives to make sure that parking spots don't turn into trash heaps[0].
Especially now that I live in a place where street parking is a prime resource and yet people _who have garages_ still choose to street park out of convenience...
[0]: not always of course, I know about the trash houses
pmg101 39 minutes ago [-]
There's a whole subculture among car people of "barn finds", well represented on YouTube but also long predating that.
I bet someone would have been absolutely delighted to have that old Peugeot!
smusamashah 10 hours ago [-]
As a total noob about the cars or buying flats or the location you are from, my first though was that why didn't you get it fixed and drive it away. But you won't have the papers then. Do the scrap yards not accept it for the same reason?
pjc50 51 minutes ago [-]
Basically yes. However I'm sure the management company (roughly what americans would call a "condo association"?) responsible could change the terms given sufficient notice to allow them to remove and auction abandoned vehicles. I'm surprised they don't given how valuable a London car park is. Maybe they're not actually abandoned?
yardie 4 hours ago [-]
It's very, very expensive to bring something back to operational after decades of neglect. Spend thousands of euros on a car worth at most 1000€
Also, we already have a car. Why would I want someone else's scraps?
aziaziazi 4 hours ago [-]
Another card noon here, especially in urban motor driving so please excuse my ignorance. In that desperate situation isn’t it cheaper to call a friend to seat on the car and handle the steering wheel while you attach the car to yours with those rods, then pull it to a metal scrapper shop that buy metal by the weight? Without plate, isn’t that car basically a non car but a pile of metal?
ponector 40 minutes ago [-]
If you are irresponsible human being you can simply tow junk car to any other public location so it is a new problem for someone else.
In our city there is a separate service where you can report abandoned car. They check, leave a note and one month later tow it to the special parking lot. Later it is sold at the auction or scrapped.
sjducb 2 hours ago [-]
If you don’t have a title or ownership history then people think the car is stolen. That’s why scrappers won’t take it.
If you have a title then people will pay you to come and pick it up.
analog31 10 hours ago [-]
Most mechanics won't fix a car on site, and there might not be space to do so. Also, a car that's been sitting for that long can't be started without at least charging the battery, and probably, replacing it. Then one wonders how much they're going to have to invest on something that might never work and that they'll still have to pay to get rid of.
oniony 16 hours 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 16 hours ago [-]
Yeah, was not a criticism, merely a "and you think that's all weird, there's also this" kinda statement.
farslan 16 hours ago [-]
All good, thanks for mentioning it. I really want to visit it. The tour guide said it's open on certain days/hours.
As far as I'm aware, the Barbican Conservatory (Greenhouse) will close for refurbishment at a point next year though. When you go currently, they'll have details of the plans for public consultation. So see it while you can (or then again in 2030 or so).
mattkevan 16 hours 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.
comprev 54 minutes ago [-]
Like walking around Venice - I spent more time retracing my steps than moving forward :)
Angostura 13 hours ago [-]
Don’t forget the only reason the greenhouse (conservatory) exists is to camouflage the fly-tower from the theatre stage below!
halfdaft 13 hours 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.
satori99 10 hours ago [-]
I wasn't sure what you were discussing. Like, what is a fly tower? So I went down a barbican rabbit hole and found this part of a video, where one of the theatre fly techs describes the same thing as you!
The 'flys' are the enormous curtains and backdrops used in theatre productions. They are raised and lowered to set new scenes in a production. They need a large space to be raised into, above the stage--which is known as a fly tower.
phatfish 12 hours ago [-]
In the days where work events were worth attending, we had one at that conservatory. It is indeed worth a visit.
stavros 13 hours ago [-]
Can you just walk in? Or do you need tickets? I see there are free tickets but they're sold out.
darajava 13 hours 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 13 hours ago [-]
Thank you!
lozenge 2 hours ago [-]
If you take the paid architecture tour, it does have a stop in the greenhouse, but the lights might be off/emergency lighting only.
stavros 2 hours ago [-]
That's probably fine if it's in the day, no?
jaqalopes 10 hours ago [-]
Sounds like the perfect setting for a souls-like game.
rjmunro 16 hours 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
libraryofbabel 14 hours 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.
ssalazar 10 hours ago [-]
The Agency on Showtime also prominently features the Barbican as the protagonist's residence with a number of great exterior shots.
sdenton4 13 hours 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...)
farslan 16 hours 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.
te_chris 1 hours ago [-]
Worth pointing out that, as a concert hall, it's extremely mediocre acoustically ( same as the Royal Fesitval Hall) - albeit pretty and I love it dearly. There was a plan to build a new, proper concert hall but it got scotched. Probably deservedly but it would've been wonderful to have a concert hall worthy of our musicians and enesembles.
curiousgal 15 hours ago [-]
Too bad the staff of that hall are completely incompetent. Put me off going there ever again.
turnsout 15 hours ago [-]
What’s the story?
DrakeDeaton 14 hours 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.
crabmusket 6 hours ago [-]
I visited after having read Jane Jacobs the year before and becoming quite sympathetic to her vision of city life and active neighbourhoods through mixed uses. The Barbican felt like the philosophical opposite.
I read somewhere, I wish I could remember where, that some urban designers in the 60s had the feeling that people should spend their recreation time in their private homes rather than outside.
The Barbican felt like it had achieved that ideal of lifelessness, with bizarrely large and featureless open spaces, scant seating, etc. Of course that contrasted with the spaces around the arts centre which were bustling.
iamacyborg 3 hours ago [-]
You don’t need maze-like entrances to make places quieter, people’s laziness will do the work for you.
I lived for a while on Bedford Avenue between the British Museum and TCR and it was dead quiet, despite the location.
justincormack 11 hours ago [-]
The whole city was supposed to be covered by high walks, but few are left and the plan didnt work.
freyfogle 11 hours ago [-]
If you know where to look there are still a few old wall maps left in the Barbican that show the old high walks
rriley 11 hours ago [-]
The Barbican is such a striking example of an architectural utopia, built not just as housing, but as a statement about how people could live, work, and engage with culture in one integrated space.
Few others worth exploring...
Walden 7 (Spain): A labyrinthine, colorful complex by Ricardo Bofill with inner courtyards and skybridges, aiming for a more social urban life based on B.F. Skinner's Walden Two philosophy.
Arcosanti (USA): Paolo Soleri’s desert experiment in “arcology”, architecture + ecology—exploring sustainable living in a compact footprint.
Unité d'Habitation (France): Le Corbusier’s "vertical garden city" combining apartments, shops, and communal spaces into one concrete megastructure.
Habitat 67 (Canada): Modular housing units stacked like Lego, Moshe Safdie’s vision for dense yet humane urban living.
Auroville (India): Founded in the 1960s as an experimental township aiming for human unity beyond politics and religion.
tweetle_beetle 11 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure how to feel about most of those these days. They are iconic and I'm glad that experimental ideas actually made it to completion, but ultimately they have failed at reimagining life for ordinary people.
In the cases of the buildings, over time their value has increased faster than an average dwelling in the vicinity, making them more exclusive and restricting access to those higher and higher up the socio-economic ladder - effectively turning them into gated community without the residents needing to feel the guilt of living behind physical gates.
The buildings are still there, and they have inhabitants, but the investment potential has long outlived any philosophy. I guess you could argue there are some secondary effects from their influence, but I wonder how the architects would feel today.
I assume they'd be confused that if their test project produced good results, why wasn't it widely replicated?
They're mostly too expensive because they're rare
Arkhaine_kupo 34 minutes ago [-]
That hardly seems like a slight to the proyects but the lack of systemic larger changes no?
The barbican was created as a council proyect for middle class people. Nowadays council houses are considered only for destitute families. So of course the priorities, prices, and accesibility of thsoe houses is very limited compared to what you could do with a proyect like the barbican.
I think with inflation on mind the average salary would be like 70k, which is way above UK average, but certainly very accesible to a large number of working professionals in the UK. There simply is not something half as good for that money being built nowadays in the UK. So obvs Barbican increases in price when there is no analagous purchase possible.
However, I feel like HDB should declare victory and go home.
frereubu 13 hours 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.
IshKebab 12 hours ago [-]
Oh no. £14k/year. I guess I won't buy that £2.5m central London flat after all.
devnullbrain 11 hours ago [-]
The inaccesibility for mere mortals ruins any claim it has to being a representative of brutalism, IMO. Of course it looks nice, it was made by the City of London at eyewatering cost with absurd levels of craftmanship. The movement wouldn't have such a bad image if other buildings had that kind of budget for upkeep and gardening. But they don't: they're rotten and barren.
eru 3 hours ago [-]
It doesn't actually look nice in person, and the craftsmanship ain't anything to write home about. (However I can believe the claims of eyewatering cost.)
The shoddy windows are particularly easy to spot, even in the pictures in the article. I'm not even sure these would be legal in Germany.
pjc50 32 minutes ago [-]
Hmm, I can't make out the windows. I did used to know someone who lived in City of London flats with single glazing on the thirteenth floor. Nice view but you could feel the heat leaking out and the wind battering them if the weather got up. UK is desperately unserious about windows.
fennecfoxy 13 minutes ago [-]
You're being downvoted for calling the Barbican a rotting piece of shit that's slowly falling apart.
I think it's a cool building for sure, but like many buildings in the UK (including people's houses) it isn't well taken care of and you can see how grotty the surfaces are on the facade, how things need to be repaired & fixed.
I'm looking to buy a house here and walking down streets of so many areas it's just crazy how people don't take pride in water blasting their driveway or the facade of their house, even things like fixing broken/cracked windows.
And then stupid fucking trends like extending your house with an open conservatory and treating it like another normal room...a single layer of brick in a country that gets cold & wet in Winter! What the hell!
eru 3 hours ago [-]
If you don't already own a flat in the Barbican, but plan to move there, than the service charges and the leasehold are immaterial to you.
If they lowered the service charges tomorrow, that would just mean that the headline market price of the apartments would go up to compensate.
If they moved from leasehold to freehold tomorrow, you would also see that reflected in the price.
pledg 8 hours ago [-]
That’s on the cheap end of zone 1 London for service charges, especially anything with a porter and gardeners. If you were buying now you’d renew the lease for about £20k, which is a tiny fraction of the purchase price you’d be paying. (Source: did it in 2022)
nbevans 13 hours ago [-]
6k is pretty typical for any premium apartments in London. That's actually pretty cheap for that location.
lozenge 2 hours ago [-]
Half of the population of the City of London (aka the square mile) is in the Barbican. There is hardly any location to compare it to.
mrtksn 12 hours ago [-]
My office was right next to Barbican, I was going to rent a place there but I cheaped out. Still bitter about it.
The thing about Barbican is that it is an opinionated living complex. People who built it had an idea on how the urban living is supposed to be and sculptured that in concrete. Very few things are changeable there, that's why it also feels like a different time.
I enjoyed walking from my office to the tube and get amazed by this giant place everyday. Never seized to amaze me. I would occasionally go there and work at the public places, it was often empty enough to find corners or passages where I can just observer the life happening in distance.
One of those rare buildings that grows on you. Cold at first glance, but once you see how people live in it, especially artists, it starts to feel weirdly warm. Brutalism is funny like that.
Ericson2314 16 hours ago [-]
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 14 hours 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.
the_mitsuhiko 12 hours ago [-]
> Interbuilding passageways complicate future renovation and redevelopment
They are also incredibly inconvenient. London had many walkways because they wanted to give cars priority, and they largely became unused and became a source for litter.
bobthepanda 49 minutes ago [-]
They can be done well but it has to be thoughtful.
Passageways in Hong Kong are popular, but that’s because the pedestrian density is so high they manage to fill both the skywalk and street level. The passageways provide shelter from tropical sun and rain, sometimes even air conditioning. And it’s a very hilly city anyways, so often you are picking between walking uphill on a plain sidewalk vs. doing it on a skywalk with escalators and elevators.
I didn't enjoy the city of arts and sciences tbh, it felt disconnected, artificial, maybe almost totalitarian in its will to show off. I also thought that, if you look past the immediate effect, it just didn't feel that good looking. A bit similar to how I often feel about Zaha Hadids work.
In comparison, in the barbican I felt like I could sit there for hours and enjoy the architecture. It has so many interesting details and aesthetically pleasing corners.
I was reading this post and thinking, huh, this would be a good set for a Coruscant shot in Andor, and sure enough ...
fmajid 16 hours ago [-]
The Scarif transport network scenes in Rogue One were shot at London's Canary Wharf Underground station, however.
SideburnsOfDoom 16 hours 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 16 hours ago [-]
Michael Fassbender's character has an apartment there in The Agency as well
tialaramex 14 hours 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 14 hours ago [-]
Don't they all live in Dolphin house? I swear Neil Burnside did.
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.
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.
dllu 13 hours ago [-]
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.
jgilias 14 hours ago [-]
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.
One can dream.
wgrover 16 hours ago [-]
Here's a cross-section through the theatre portion of the Barbican showing the complexity of the engineering:
This is incredible. I remember failing to hunt some down earlier, but does anyone know of really detailed plans or 3D models?
seanhunter 1 hours ago [-]
I did my music postgrad at the Guildhall school of music and drama, which is in the Barbican. Fun facts:
1) Orlando Bloom did the drama course when we were there. Famous music students there include Bryn Terfel, Jaqueline du pre and tons of others.
2) I say we because my wife did a music postgrad there at the same time but we didn’t meet until we left even though we were once on the same openday concert program together. (My composition was chosen to represent the jazz courses so I was in a group that played that - my wife won a chamber music award so she was playing later in the concert with a guitarist, but us jazzers didn’t get to see that).
3) We didn’t meet because she did early music whereas I did the jazz course and all the lessons on the jazz course were underground. You may think I am joking but literally all our lessons were in the basement except for if we had a visiting musician do a masterclass (then they used to use one of the nice airy and bright above-ground rooms, some of which have a lovely view of the lake).
4) As well as the concert hall which people have mentioned, there is a theatre and at least 2 cinemas as part of the Barbican complex. If you know where to look there are parts of the old roman wall and at least 2 ruined medieval churches. You are also not far at all from one of London’s real hidden gems, the cathedral of St Bartholomew the great, a medieval cathedral down a little side alley near Smithfield market that tons of people in London don’t even know exists. Oh and for Americans, Benjamin Franklin once worked there as a typesetter[1]
My wife now teaches at the Guildhall. It’s a pretty special place especially this time of year when it’s nice. You can go sit out by the lake in the sunshine, watch the ducks etc. It’s really peaceful even though you are yards from old street, moorgate, liverpool street etc some of the busiest parts of london.
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).
ljm 12 hours ago [-]
Maybe because other brutalist estates in London aren’t nearly as well kept or, uh, wealthy, than the Barbican is. And perhaps it’s uncommon to wander through such estates when you don’t live in them.
The old Robin Hood Gardens before they were demolished were quite unwelcoming, looking from the outside. You wouldn’t go anywhere near those kind of estates unless you were a resident, and you’d have a very different impression as someone who saw what it was like internally.
frutiger 11 hours ago [-]
Heh, very strange to see someone mention this online. (I grew up in the non-Brutalist but nearby Aberfeldy Estate, and now live a few thousand miles away).
eszed 12 hours ago [-]
Like - at least in my opinion - many brutalist buildings, it's ugly from the outside and gorgeous on the inside. I've explored it many times, and agree with everything in this article and in the positive comments in the thread. And... I kinda agree with you, too. What experience - interior or exterior - architects should prioritize is an interesting conundrum.
xixixao 12 hours ago [-]
I agree the interior is nicer than the exterior.
But it’s still dreary, in person, on a cloudy day. This style looks good in drawings, well lit and edited photos, but I think it’s a false/failed direction in living reality (specifically the facade, the building shape, “tunnels” etc).
eszed 3 hours ago [-]
> dreary, in person, on a cloudy day
I mean, what isn't? :-)
The tunnels are kinda ick, and there are other bits I don't like, also. There's a walkway I've ended up on a time or two that's just bare and windswept, and badly needs... Something to break it up.
Still, though: I think I'd be pretty happy living there (even if it mightn't be my top choice). The (both design and amenity) positives outweigh the negatives, which I cannot say about many, many other parts of London. Do you disagree with that?
IshKebab 11 hours ago [-]
It's definitely one of the least bad brutalist constructions. It's also quite nice if you're walking around inside it on the walkways.
It's awful if you're walking along actual roads though. I would avoid it too.
vr46 13 hours 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.
grumpy-de-sre 16 hours 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.
vkazanov 12 hours ago [-]
Oh... barbican...
Me and my 10 year old kid were playing quake 1 together, a map pack called Brutalism jam. Having discussed the style we went to barbican, saw the greenhouse and walked around the complex for a while.
The kid couldn't stop talking about it for months! Amazing place (also a surreal map pack).
sagacity 16 hours 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.
hnlmorg 16 hours 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 14 hours 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 13 hours 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 14 hours 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 13 hours ago [-]
Go for it, which major art galleries, auditoriums and cinemas are 15 minutes from the Barbican?
lmm 8 hours ago [-]
No single big name (although the Guildhall gallery is underrated) but there are a lot of trendy small galleries in the Old Street/Shoreditch area. Sadler's Wells Theatre is extremely reputable and just up the road. There's an Everyman in broad street and two full-on arts cinemas by Shoreditch High Street. That whole area has changed a lot over the last 20 years or so.
hnlmorg 13 hours 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.
dreghgh 12 hours ago [-]
There are many cultural centers in the West End, Kensington, and boroughs outside the City, but none of them are 10 or 15 minutes from the Barbican center (hence your not being able to name a single one).
There is a theatre at Tottenham Court Road. It is over 30 minutes away from the Barbican centre by foot (but about 10 minutes by Elizabeth line).
The nearest major art gallery to TCR is not in Soho, but 15-20 minutes from Tottenham Court Road. There are two other major galleries closer to the Barbican than anywhere near Soho. Both are at least 25 minutes by foot and at least 25 minutes by tube.
There isn't an auditorium in Soho, unless you can name one? St-Martin-in-the-fields is no closer than the National portrait gallery, 20 min by foot or 15 by bus from TCR. Easily 25-30 minutes from the Barbican centre by any means of transport.
Likewise there are several repertory cinemas in Soho but none of them are 0 minutes from Tottenham Court Road.
Your claim of 15 minutes by foot was completely laughable. My claim of around 30 minutes in each case was accurate.
hnlmorg 12 hours ago [-]
The problem isn’t naming them, the problem is you shifting goal posts by saying “major”. Which could just as easily exclude the amenities at the Barbican too, given “major” is an entirely subjective term.
Also I never claimed 15 minutes by foot. And given how good public transport is in London, it’s a silly argument for you to make that we can only talk about out walking somewhere.
Plus even if we were just talking about walking, as myself and others have pointed out to you, half an hour isn’t far to walk in central London. Londoners do it all the time.
There really isn’t any need for you to be taking such an aggressive tone here.
dreghgh 12 hours ago [-]
Name any art gallery which you think is a major art gallery, ie of comparable or greater size and prestige to the Barbican art gallery and is 15 minutes from the Barbican center, including by public transport?
You can't, because there isn't one.
You made an incorrect statement, and now you're defending it, but without providing any example at all of what you are claiming exists. So it's a little bit cheeky to claim that I am shifting the goal posts.
But if you really care about art then you aren’t going to limit yourself to “major” art galleries (again, speaking from experience here).
This whole argument is absurd. I dont understand why you find it so controversial to claim that a flat in central London would be near pretty much anything you could want. Business district or not, I stand by my statement. If it weren’t true then people wouldn’t pay the premium to live in central London.
dreghgh 10 hours ago [-]
Tate Modern (yes, it is definitely a major art gallery) is around half an hour from the Barbican center by foot, and around half an hour from the Barbican center by public transport.
Read my comment again:
> 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.
Your single 'counter-example' is a serious art gallery, which is around half an hour away...
hnlmorg 1 hours ago [-]
It’s actually closer to 20mins by mass transit. As that link I shared demonstrated
Also I’d argue the Santander Cycles are a form of public transport (just not mass transit like buses or the tube)
But honestly, you’re the first Londoner I’ve spoken to who considers 30 minutes by foot a long way away. Even by London standards, that’s close. For suburban dwellers, 30 minutes by foot wouldn’t even get them close to their nearest art gallery (and I don’t even mean “major” galleries either).
And your insistence on limiting things by “major” instances is odd. London has a strong culture of smaller independent amenities. Many of which are a lot closer than Soho and Southbank.
This is honestly the first time I’ve ever heard anyone complain about a zone one apartment being a long way from stuff.
barrkel 9 hours ago [-]
Your strident tone isn't doing your position any favours.
You're a lot closer to everything in the Barbican than you are in Croydon or Enfield or Acton or Stratford.
London is big. The City is close enough to the centre that it is central, compared to most of London.
(Personally I think the Barbican is ugly, and I didn't like moving around in it, with long walkways forcing unnatural navigation. It only works, in so far as it works, due to a degree of elite mindshare capture keeping it owned and occupied by the wealthy. Put the same idea in Stratford and come back to somewhere far less pleasant in 20 years.)
philipwhiuk 13 hours 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.
eru 3 hours ago [-]
I used to live just off Old Street and worked in the City, so I frequently passed by the Barbican when I walked to work.
It's an interesting place to be sure, but I wouldn't praise it nearly as much as the article does.
I personally love the brutalist and gigantic architecture of this time. Jam pack the flats, leave space for nature and public areas around it. Fairly standard in developed Asia, rare outside of ghettos in the West. Every time I discuss it with others, it's a hard sell against the "bbq with your neighbors in your back garden" so many aspire to by moving in suburbian houses.
jonwinstanley 2 hours ago [-]
Some of Star Wars: Andor was filmed there. The concrete walkways look great as futuristic structures.
When people point to examples of bad brutalist architecture, I point them to the Barbican as a beautiful counter-example.
munificent 16 hours 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.
pjc50 38 minutes ago [-]
Unfortunately without careful continuous maintenance the plants destroy the concrete. Whenever I see plants on one of these buildings that's usually a sign it's been abandoned. It has a post-apocalyptic HZD feel. Like the RBS Dundas Street "ziggurat". https://x.com/sallymiranda/status/1400883551751610381
> 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.
Yes, this is the fundamental error of modernism/brutalism - the belief that flatness and the lack of ornamentation is beautiful. It can be .. but only under optimal conditions, like the concept art. "Material design" for buildings. As soon as it gets a bit weathered and dirty it becomes merely drab. Plants provide some organic variation over the surface, breaking up the now-dirty "clean" lines.
chilmers 15 hours 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.
pjc50 36 minutes ago [-]
For many modern buildings, the concept art used to sell it to the planners has a lot more plants in than actually get planted, or survive the first year.
> embowered
I think this is a typo for "empowered", but it's also a great word for covering something with trees.
empath75 14 hours 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.
The Brunswick Centre is one of my favourite parts of central London
notahacker 15 hours ago [-]
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...
ninalanyon 16 hours ago [-]
Exceptions prove the rule. Prove means test.
gwern 14 hours 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.
Animats 3 hours ago [-]
I've been there for two convention-type meetings, on completely different subjects but in the same space. I kept feeling I was in the private space of residents while trying to find a meeting room.
Never got up high enough to see the greenhouse.
jbl0ndie 11 hours ago [-]
Every detail of the Barbican is a joy. Even the skirting board where the wall meets the flooring is gently curved, making it a easy to clean.
Another fun Barbican fact is their Garchey System for waste disposal.
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 15 hours 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).
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)!
zombot 2 hours ago [-]
Beautiful.
The author misspelled Londinium.
farslan 1 hours ago [-]
Thank you! I've fixed it.
ChuckMcM 9 hours ago [-]
Interesting that they took out the hospital/clinic ? Seems like it would be useful. In the US there are 'golf course to the grave' type communities for adults who want to go smoothly from the 50's into the afterlife. And when I was a teen I read Silverberg's book "The World Inside"[1] which postulated the "Urbmon" a complete community in a single structure. That has always fascinated me, the question of "Can you build a carbon neutral self sustaining human community?" I presume you can but how effective would it be? The Barbican looks like an interesting take on mixed use.
"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...
probabletrain 17 hours 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 15 hours 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 16 hours 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.
enneff 12 hours ago [-]
It’s hard to explain just how nice Leica lenses can be in the right hands. There is a reason they have a cult like following.
munificent 11 hours ago [-]
Oh, yeah, but oof the price.
jjani 6 hours ago [-]
The stunning architecture is what makes it unique. Truly beautiful and one-of-a-kind, it's a work of art. Most of the functional stuff mentioned (underground parking, cradle to grave amenities, online community, (music) academy inside the complex) is bog standard living in much of Korea, and I imagine modern China as well.
dewey 7 hours ago [-]
I recently saw a flat listing, which gives a nice peek inside of one of the very nicely furnished flats:
Trellick is what people film when they can't get the Barbican to work (bluntly)
derriz 16 hours 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 16 hours 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 13 hours 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 16 hours 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
KaiserPro 16 hours 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 13 hours 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 16 hours ago [-]
The Barbican was never built as social housing - the intended occupants were always central London professional workers and they charged market rates.
KaiserPro 13 hours ago [-]
Thats my point, because it wasn't run within the confines of the 1970+ social housing straight jacket (funding not dependent on tenants, no ability to control who was placed in there, centralised funding formula that meant you might gets loads of money one year, and none over the next ten.)
notahacker 14 hours 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 14 hours 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 13 hours 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.
Karrot_Kream 15 hours 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 15 hours 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 15 hours 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 15 hours 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.
graemep 15 hours 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.
mobiuscog 33 minutes ago [-]
Dropped in to see why Plymouth was being featured...
...left unsurprised.
electrosphere 12 hours ago [-]
I often take my friends to the walkway where they filmed the Imperial capital scenes in Andor.
The Barbican is Coruscant.
walrus01 1 hours ago [-]
People who enjoy the Barbican should also like SFU campus in Burnaby in metro Vancouver, and the well known concrete waffle on West Georgia St. The concrete waffle office tower was also CGIed into american nazi party headquarters in "The Man in the High Castle".
ArthurStacks 10 hours ago [-]
A section of the article seems to have been lost. The whole part about it being an unsafe crime ridden drug ridden pit at night infested with undesirables
codeulike 13 hours ago [-]
There's also the Barbican Centre that a cinema/theatre/concert hall, they have some great stuff there
The video for the Dua Lipa track "Blow Your Mind (Mwah)" was shot on the estate for anyone interested in listening to that 2017 banger again.
earlyriser 13 hours ago [-]
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.
manmal 15 hours 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 16 hours ago [-]
The events, cultural activities and especially some of the curated exhibitions at the Barbican have been outstanding. Highly recommend to anyone visiting London.
EbNar 15 hours ago [-]
That's amusing... I learned about this building during my english proficiency exam, as the "listening" part narrated its story.
scoofy 16 hours ago [-]
I'm glad people appreciate the building. You all can have it... it's just not for me.
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).
renewiltord 11 hours ago [-]
Fortunately, nothing like this will be built ever again because we wouldn't want to ruin the character of the neighbourhood.
dgroshev 10 hours ago [-]
Two less mentioned sides of the Barbican that I love:
- how much design work was put into it. So many of it, from little bits and bobs (an awning, an electric socket, a doorframe), to the overall layout are unique to the area they are in and aren't copy-pasted elsewhere! It creates a coherent, but varying ensamble that is vibrant and alive, and is not just a grid of repeated elements.
- relatedly, how deeply organic the maze of the Barbican is. Contrast the raw concrete of the Barbican with the flowing lines of the Walkie-Talkie: one has an organic and smooth shape, but is really a 3D grid of repeated blocks; the other is made entirely of exposed raw concrete, but you never know what you will see around a corner. In this sense, the Barbican is more organic than most modern architecture. It's a place of wonder and surprise.
I love the Barbican.
hkt 12 hours ago [-]
It is a tragedy that this kind of visionary architecture isn't the mainstay of housing in the UK. I used to live in Park Hill in Sheffield, and the sheer beauty of those clean lines against a blue sky is hard to understate.
globular-toast 13 hours 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 13 hours ago [-]
For this crowd, maybe "all the photos where shoot with the Leica M11 + 35mm Summilux FLE btw" might be more apt.
farslan 12 hours ago [-]
Funny because I always thought of `nit` as something like `btw`. It never occured to me it's actually an abbrevation of nitpick :) Learnt something new today. I'll fix it, thank you!
(English is my second language, so stuff like this can happen sometimes)
SideburnsOfDoom 16 hours 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 16 hours ago [-]
Glad you enjoyed your visit, lovely photos too.
farslan 16 hours ago [-]
Thank you!
Klaus_ 25 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
khalfan-shah098 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
projektfu 16 hours ago [-]
No, it's definitely ugly and an abomination. One of London's worst and probably, unfortunately, historically protected.
eilzo 16 hours ago [-]
To each their own :). One of my favourite places in London.
philipwhiuk 13 hours ago [-]
It's far from the worst, but it's going up the list because we keep knocking them down.
This site also seems to have lots of background info and details on various aspects of the buildings, though I haven't explored in depth --- https://www.barbicanliving.co.uk
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.
This is just London, out of the 8 years I've spent here, 3 of them were spent with a dishwasher. Tbh I've got a dishwasher now and barely use it.
Did you used to cook for the seven dwarves and their extended families, every day?
This is quite common for older places in the UK. Some places might have been updated to allow for a dishwasher, but there are probably rules against that in the Barbican.
It's not so bad once you head out into the counties either I suppose.
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.
While it doesn't stop cars from being abandoned "randomly", just the entire principle of having a paper trail for these things and creating a bunch of incentives to make sure that parking spots don't turn into trash heaps[0].
Especially now that I live in a place where street parking is a prime resource and yet people _who have garages_ still choose to street park out of convenience...
[0]: not always of course, I know about the trash houses
I bet someone would have been absolutely delighted to have that old Peugeot!
Also, we already have a car. Why would I want someone else's scraps?
In our city there is a separate service where you can report abandoned car. They check, leave a note and one month later tow it to the special parking lot. Later it is sold at the auction or scrapped.
If you have a title then people will pay you to come and pick it up.
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...
As far as I'm aware, the Barbican Conservatory (Greenhouse) will close for refurbishment at a point next year though. When you go currently, they'll have details of the plans for public consultation. So see it while you can (or then again in 2030 or so).
Such a contrast to the Sky Garden in the City which has all the charm of an airport departure lounge.
https://youtu.be/uDdTUBk-qjo?t=140
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
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.
(That same Live at the Barbican album is weirdly hard to find because it was a damned Apple Music exclusive. Travesty...)
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.
I read somewhere, I wish I could remember where, that some urban designers in the 60s had the feeling that people should spend their recreation time in their private homes rather than outside.
The Barbican felt like it had achieved that ideal of lifelessness, with bizarrely large and featureless open spaces, scant seating, etc. Of course that contrasted with the spaces around the arts centre which were bustling.
I lived for a while on Bedford Avenue between the British Museum and TCR and it was dead quiet, despite the location.
Few others worth exploring...
Walden 7 (Spain): A labyrinthine, colorful complex by Ricardo Bofill with inner courtyards and skybridges, aiming for a more social urban life based on B.F. Skinner's Walden Two philosophy.
Arcosanti (USA): Paolo Soleri’s desert experiment in “arcology”, architecture + ecology—exploring sustainable living in a compact footprint.
Unité d'Habitation (France): Le Corbusier’s "vertical garden city" combining apartments, shops, and communal spaces into one concrete megastructure.
Habitat 67 (Canada): Modular housing units stacked like Lego, Moshe Safdie’s vision for dense yet humane urban living.
Auroville (India): Founded in the 1960s as an experimental township aiming for human unity beyond politics and religion.
In the cases of the buildings, over time their value has increased faster than an average dwelling in the vicinity, making them more exclusive and restricting access to those higher and higher up the socio-economic ladder - effectively turning them into gated community without the residents needing to feel the guilt of living behind physical gates.
The buildings are still there, and they have inhabitants, but the investment potential has long outlived any philosophy. I guess you could argue there are some secondary effects from their influence, but I wonder how the architects would feel today.
See also Park Hill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Hill%2C_Sheffield
They're mostly too expensive because they're rare
The barbican was created as a council proyect for middle class people. Nowadays council houses are considered only for destitute families. So of course the priorities, prices, and accesibility of thsoe houses is very limited compared to what you could do with a proyect like the barbican.
I think with inflation on mind the average salary would be like 70k, which is way above UK average, but certainly very accesible to a large number of working professionals in the UK. There simply is not something half as good for that money being built nowadays in the UK. So obvs Barbican increases in price when there is no analagous purchase possible.
However, I feel like HDB should declare victory and go home.
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.
The shoddy windows are particularly easy to spot, even in the pictures in the article. I'm not even sure these would be legal in Germany.
I think it's a cool building for sure, but like many buildings in the UK (including people's houses) it isn't well taken care of and you can see how grotty the surfaces are on the facade, how things need to be repaired & fixed.
I'm looking to buy a house here and walking down streets of so many areas it's just crazy how people don't take pride in water blasting their driveway or the facade of their house, even things like fixing broken/cracked windows.
And then stupid fucking trends like extending your house with an open conservatory and treating it like another normal room...a single layer of brick in a country that gets cold & wet in Winter! What the hell!
If they lowered the service charges tomorrow, that would just mean that the headline market price of the apartments would go up to compensate.
If they moved from leasehold to freehold tomorrow, you would also see that reflected in the price.
The thing about Barbican is that it is an opinionated living complex. People who built it had an idea on how the urban living is supposed to be and sculptured that in concrete. Very few things are changeable there, that's why it also feels like a different time.
I enjoyed walking from my office to the tube and get amazed by this giant place everyday. Never seized to amaze me. I would occasionally go there and work at the public places, it was often empty enough to find corners or passages where I can just observer the life happening in distance.
Here's a couple of photos: https://dropover.cloud/09cb4c
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.
They are also incredibly inconvenient. London had many walkways because they wanted to give cars priority, and they largely became unused and became a source for litter.
Passageways in Hong Kong are popular, but that’s because the pedestrian density is so high they manage to fill both the skywalk and street level. The passageways provide shelter from tropical sun and rain, sometimes even air conditioning. And it’s a very hilly city anyways, so often you are picking between walking uphill on a plain sidewalk vs. doing it on a skywalk with escalators and elevators.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Arts_and_Sciences
In particular, the Museo de las Ciencias Príncipe Felipe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Arts_and_Sciences#/med...
In comparison, in the barbican I felt like I could sit there for hours and enjoy the architecture. It has so many interesting details and aesthetically pleasing corners.
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.
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.
https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/5w9ep7/cross_...
1) Orlando Bloom did the drama course when we were there. Famous music students there include Bryn Terfel, Jaqueline du pre and tons of others.
2) I say we because my wife did a music postgrad there at the same time but we didn’t meet until we left even though we were once on the same openday concert program together. (My composition was chosen to represent the jazz courses so I was in a group that played that - my wife won a chamber music award so she was playing later in the concert with a guitarist, but us jazzers didn’t get to see that).
3) We didn’t meet because she did early music whereas I did the jazz course and all the lessons on the jazz course were underground. You may think I am joking but literally all our lessons were in the basement except for if we had a visiting musician do a masterclass (then they used to use one of the nice airy and bright above-ground rooms, some of which have a lovely view of the lake).
4) As well as the concert hall which people have mentioned, there is a theatre and at least 2 cinemas as part of the Barbican complex. If you know where to look there are parts of the old roman wall and at least 2 ruined medieval churches. You are also not far at all from one of London’s real hidden gems, the cathedral of St Bartholomew the great, a medieval cathedral down a little side alley near Smithfield market that tons of people in London don’t even know exists. Oh and for Americans, Benjamin Franklin once worked there as a typesetter[1]
My wife now teaches at the Guildhall. It’s a pretty special place especially this time of year when it’s nice. You can go sit out by the lake in the sunshine, watch the ducks etc. It’s really peaceful even though you are yards from old street, moorgate, liverpool street etc some of the busiest parts of london.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Bartholomew-the-Great
The old Robin Hood Gardens before they were demolished were quite unwelcoming, looking from the outside. You wouldn’t go anywhere near those kind of estates unless you were a resident, and you’d have a very different impression as someone who saw what it was like internally.
But it’s still dreary, in person, on a cloudy day. This style looks good in drawings, well lit and edited photos, but I think it’s a false/failed direction in living reality (specifically the facade, the building shape, “tunnels” etc).
I mean, what isn't? :-)
The tunnels are kinda ick, and there are other bits I don't like, also. There's a walkway I've ended up on a time or two that's just bare and windswept, and badly needs... Something to break it up.
Still, though: I think I'd be pretty happy living there (even if it mightn't be my top choice). The (both design and amenity) positives outweigh the negatives, which I cannot say about many, many other parts of London. Do you disagree with that?
It's awful if you're walking along actual roads though. I would avoid it too.
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.
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.
Me and my 10 year old kid were playing quake 1 together, a map pack called Brutalism jam. Having discussed the style we went to barbican, saw the greenhouse and walked around the complex for a while.
The kid couldn't stop talking about it for months! Amazing place (also a surreal map pack).
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.
There is a theatre at Tottenham Court Road. It is over 30 minutes away from the Barbican centre by foot (but about 10 minutes by Elizabeth line).
The nearest major art gallery to TCR is not in Soho, but 15-20 minutes from Tottenham Court Road. There are two other major galleries closer to the Barbican than anywhere near Soho. Both are at least 25 minutes by foot and at least 25 minutes by tube.
There isn't an auditorium in Soho, unless you can name one? St-Martin-in-the-fields is no closer than the National portrait gallery, 20 min by foot or 15 by bus from TCR. Easily 25-30 minutes from the Barbican centre by any means of transport.
Likewise there are several repertory cinemas in Soho but none of them are 0 minutes from Tottenham Court Road.
Your claim of 15 minutes by foot was completely laughable. My claim of around 30 minutes in each case was accurate.
Also I never claimed 15 minutes by foot. And given how good public transport is in London, it’s a silly argument for you to make that we can only talk about out walking somewhere.
Plus even if we were just talking about walking, as myself and others have pointed out to you, half an hour isn’t far to walk in central London. Londoners do it all the time.
There really isn’t any need for you to be taking such an aggressive tone here.
You can't, because there isn't one.
You made an incorrect statement, and now you're defending it, but without providing any example at all of what you are claiming exists. So it's a little bit cheeky to claim that I am shifting the goal posts.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/sdW7h8zMb7qj42Nd8?g_st=ic
But if you really care about art then you aren’t going to limit yourself to “major” art galleries (again, speaking from experience here).
This whole argument is absurd. I dont understand why you find it so controversial to claim that a flat in central London would be near pretty much anything you could want. Business district or not, I stand by my statement. If it weren’t true then people wouldn’t pay the premium to live in central London.
Read my comment again:
> 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.
Your single 'counter-example' is a serious art gallery, which is around half an hour away...
Also I’d argue the Santander Cycles are a form of public transport (just not mass transit like buses or the tube)
https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/cycling/Santander-cycles
But honestly, you’re the first Londoner I’ve spoken to who considers 30 minutes by foot a long way away. Even by London standards, that’s close. For suburban dwellers, 30 minutes by foot wouldn’t even get them close to their nearest art gallery (and I don’t even mean “major” galleries either).
And your insistence on limiting things by “major” instances is odd. London has a strong culture of smaller independent amenities. Many of which are a lot closer than Soho and Southbank.
This is honestly the first time I’ve ever heard anyone complain about a zone one apartment being a long way from stuff.
You're a lot closer to everything in the Barbican than you are in Croydon or Enfield or Acton or Stratford.
London is big. The City is close enough to the centre that it is central, compared to most of London.
(Personally I think the Barbican is ugly, and I didn't like moving around in it, with long walkways forcing unnatural navigation. It only works, in so far as it works, due to a degree of elite mindshare capture keeping it owned and occupied by the wealthy. Put the same idea in Stratford and come back to somewhere far less pleasant in 20 years.)
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.
It's an interesting place to be sure, but I wouldn't praise it nearly as much as the article does.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43966676 expresses some of what I felt.
I personally love the brutalist and gigantic architecture of this time. Jam pack the flats, leave space for nature and public areas around it. Fairly standard in developed Asia, rare outside of ghettos in the West. Every time I discuss it with others, it's a hard sell against the "bbq with your neighbors in your back garden" so many aspire to by moving in suburbian houses.
https://www.nadamaktari.com/nadamaktari-memorylog/architectu...
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.
> 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.
Yes, this is the fundamental error of modernism/brutalism - the belief that flatness and the lack of ornamentation is beautiful. It can be .. but only under optimal conditions, like the concept art. "Material design" for buildings. As soon as it gets a bit weathered and dirty it becomes merely drab. Plants provide some organic variation over the surface, breaking up the now-dirty "clean" lines.
> embowered
I think this is a typo for "empowered", but it's also a great word for covering something with trees.
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.
Never got up high enough to see the greenhouse.
Another fun Barbican fact is their Garchey System for waste disposal.
The wet food waste is collected communally and taken away by custom-built tanker vehicles that connect to the holding tanks. https://www.barbicanliving.co.uk/barbican-now/garchey/the-ga...
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...
The author misspelled Londinium.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Inside
Of all the great information, that's the bit that sticks in my mind for some reason. I'd like to pics of that...
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://themodernhouse.com/sales-list/defoe-house-II
Edit: Just saw there's another comment with some other listings from that website, they are all quite nice.
It was also the setting for part of Harry Styles As It Was https://youtu.be/H5v3kku4y6Q
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trellick_Tower
https://architectureau.com/articles/the-brutality-of-vertica...
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'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 :)
Theatre, concert hall, library, cinema and a few other things in the building. well kept gardens. Friendly and peaceful.
...left unsurprised.
The Barbican is Coruscant.
https://www.barbican.org.uk/
- how much design work was put into it. So many of it, from little bits and bobs (an awning, an electric socket, a doorframe), to the overall layout are unique to the area they are in and aren't copy-pasted elsewhere! It creates a coherent, but varying ensamble that is vibrant and alive, and is not just a grid of repeated elements.
- relatedly, how deeply organic the maze of the Barbican is. Contrast the raw concrete of the Barbican with the flowing lines of the Walkie-Talkie: one has an organic and smooth shape, but is really a 3D grid of repeated blocks; the other is made entirely of exposed raw concrete, but you never know what you will see around a corner. In this sense, the Barbican is more organic than most modern architecture. It's a place of wonder and surprise.
I love the Barbican.
(English is my second language, so stuff like this can happen sometimes)
I was fortunate enough to be in there recently.