A monstrosity or a home with culture?
It is said that no-one lives in the City, that square mile within London’s historic city wall where more than 300,000 people have their place of work and a mere 12,000 their dwelling. One third of the latter group are at home in The Barbican.
Wartime bombing turned the parish of Cripplegate into an uninhabited field of ruins. In order to breathe life into the City, plans for residential development began in the 1950s, but the project was completed only in the mid-1970s. Some 2000 flats were constructed from raw-looking, dark concrete, many of them in three towers that rise 123 metres with 42 storeys each. The labyrinth of steps and raised walkways that link the 13 residential blocks can be relied upon to confuse visitors. In keeping with the word »Barbican«, meaning outworks of a fortification, the whole complex turns inwards, saluting its surroundings with concrete cliffs. Is it an urban atrocity?
Info
Address North of London Wall, EC2Y 8DT | Public Transport Barbican (Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan Line) | Hours Conservatory usually Sun noon–5pm,see www.barbican.org.uk | Tip South of The Barbican, the historic seat of London’s government, Guildhall, stands above the remains of a Roman amphitheatre which, like the hall dating from 1411 and the art gallery, is open to visitors (daily 10am–4.30 pm, Sun only May–Sept).
In fact the Barbican has become a popular, traffic-free place to live and in 2001 received the accolade of a Grade II listing as a site of special architectual interest. The closed-off architecture keeps out the roar of London’s streets. Residents are soothed by the sound of splashing fountains on the café terrace and the sight of hanging green gardens or water lilies and reeds in the big pond. The Barbican Arts Centre is a respected venue for cinemas, plays, concerts and exhibitions, and home to a conservatory filled with 2000 tropical plants. Tourists find historical sights such as the 1000-year-old church of St Giles-without-Cripplegate. Built in its present form in 1394 and altered many times, it is the church where Oliver Cromwell married and the poet John Milton was laid to rest. Gardens and a moat flank substantial remains of London’s medieval city wall with its Roman foundations. As the stone cladding was taken for other purposes, only the core of the wall survives – rough masonry, hardly more attractive than the concrete of the Barbican towers.
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