From the Archive: Barbican Estate

Barbican Estate, The Modern House
Barbican Estate, The Modern House

One of the most successful post-war housing projects, the Barbican defies easy definition. Originally intended as an entirely new, self-contained city district, it contains over 2,000 apartments, as well as public green spaces, an arts complex, library, museum and schools. The coherence of the architecture and close proximity to the City of London lent the apartments great social cachet from the outset, so the estate suffered none of the social problems typically attributed to large-scale modernist developments (especially those that used large quantities of exposed concrete structure).

As a result, the Barbican remains a hugely successful anomaly, unlikely to be replicated on such a scale again (at least in the UK). Despite replacing large swathes of bomb-damaged London, the estate’s architects weren’t appointed until the mid-1950s and its construction didn’t begin until 1965, lasting well over a decade. The Barbican Centre itself finally opened in 1982.

Despite the drawn out process, the solidity and coherence of the architects’ original plans set the buildings apart from passing fads. Externally, the Barbican’s rough, jack-hammered concrete fins have endured, passing in and out of fashion and back in again, their Brutalist forms finding favour amongst a new generation.

Photography: Neil Perry

 

Our From the Archive series takes excerpts and images from ‘The Modern House‘ by Jonathan Bell, Matt Gibberd and Albert Hill – a publication written and produced to celebrate our 10th anniversary. Produced in 2015, this book offers our own distinctive snapshot of what it means to live in a modern way in Britain.

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