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'd love to retire there when the kids are gone, although there are a lot of oddities about Barbican living to contend with that are probably more fun to read about than deal with for real.
Thanks for that, put a smile on my face.
And about 200ft. Such is the maze-like nature of the Barbican.
Fun fact: a good chunk of the video to “As It Was” was shot there.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Of all the great information, that's the bit that sticks in my mind for some reason. I'd like to pics of that...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trellick_Tower
https://architectureau.com/articles/the-brutality-of-vertica...
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...)
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.
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.
Anyhow, one day I went a different way and there was this massive, tropical greenhouse. Kinda hard to believe if you've ever seen the place.
https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2025/event/visit-the-co...
Such a contrast to the Sky Garden in the City which has all the charm of an airport departure lounge.
https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/5w9ep7/cross_...
Whether its the Barbican, or "Grad Center" at Brown University, there are all sorts of elevated walkways that you can see from other levels, defying "every floor is like every other floor" expectations.
I think I have vague memories of when being a small child, being filled with wonder at various municipal buildings that did this. Though my memory hazy and I cannot remember the specific buildings.
Interbuilding passageways complicate future renovation and redevelopment, and spreading eyes on the street thinly makes all walking areas harder to secure.
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.
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. ;)
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 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
This whole argument is absurd because where you claimed I was “totally inaccurate” by saying 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.
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.
I was fortunate enough to be in there recently.
Theatre, concert hall, library, cinema and a few other things in the building. well kept gardens. Friendly and peaceful.
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 :)
For those interested / invested, they recently launched a Barbican renewal project: https://www.barbican.org.uk/our-story/press-room/barbican-un...
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.
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.
(English is my second language, so stuff like this can happen sometimes)
Elsewhere in the place, I have loved going to exhibitions, theatre plays, gigs and the cinema. It's a one-stop cultural hub that evokes the glamour of flying in the olden days.
https://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.
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).
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.
The Barbican is Coruscant.
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).
It was also the setting for part of Harry Styles As It Was https://youtu.be/H5v3kku4y6Q
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
pkd•5h ago
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
JimDabell•4h ago
https://www.architectural-review.com/today/the-interlace-in-...
jgilias•2h ago
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.
porphyra•1h ago
dllu•1h ago