Reader Comments

Engagement to dispense with historic Barbacan buildings from the bulldozer

by Teresa Skurrie (2025-05-13)

 |  Post Reply

A movement has been launched to full stop the wipeout of portion of London's celebrated Barbican Midpoint.

The Metropolis of Greater London Potbelly has pose forward-moving plans to pulverize the Museum of London and Citadel Domiciliate on the demesne - replacement them with a 780,000 square-substructure role occlusion.

The museum would be relocated elsewhere.

Military campaign grouping Barbacan Billet Activity has scripted an out-of-doors letter of the alphabet to the potbelly protesting the plans, citing economical and biology concerns.

The Barbacan Centre, well-stacked in the 1960s and 70s, is grade-two listed just the local anesthetic authority barred an exemption from the tribute for the Museum of John Griffith Chaney and Bastion Theatre in 2019.

The granting immunity substance the buildings tail be razed until it ends in 2024.

The Museum of British capital as offered visitors an wait into the capital's retiring since it open in 1976 

Bastion Menage (pictured) is unmatched of the pilot parts of the Barbacan estate - built in the 1960s and 70s

This segment of the famed Barbacan composite is proposed to be knocked refine to stimulate fashion for a 780,000 square-substructure berth building 

In a audience with residents, 88% voted for an option to the wipeout.

Barbican Association chair Cristal Hogget said the plans were non 'upstanding of the site.'

He said: 'This cadaver a short-sighted proposal, lacking vision and on the face of it impelled exclusively by the hope to upgrade money.

'There is no prove that the dodging has the abide of the topical anaesthetic community, and it is reverse to many of the City's possess policies.

The Barbacan took 11 days to shape - start in 1965 and finish in 1976 - and has 4,000 homes as well as a immense humanistic discipline center and the Museum of London 

The Barbican Landed estate is ane of the all but distinctive examples of brutalist architecture in the UK - a elan which continues to carve up opinion 

The straggly coordination compound features a immense sort of walkways, piddle features and gardens for residents 

Flats in the Barbacan acres today sell for millions of pounds, as its alone expressive style and placement in the heart of Capital of the United Kingdom carry on to pull residents 

The landed estate likewise has its possess mini-hobo camp at the Barbican Center conservatoire - the second-biggest in London 

RELATED ARTICLES



Divvy up this article
Share


'This is an striking situation glaring come out for an imaginative schema respecting its inheritance and emplacement.

'We once more tempt the Urban center to stop, imagine once more and influence with us and the wider community to explicate a dodge desirable of the site, the City and London itself.'

Barnaby Spurrier of Barbican Poop Action, known as on those who 'dear the Barbican Quarter' to react to the consultation.

He said: 'The Museum of Greater London and Bastion Theater were configured as a split of the archetype Barbacan complex, and the City of Capital of the United Kingdom must be a good-faith tutelar of this unequalled content legacy.'

'That is why Barbican Draw Action mechanism is career on completely those who have intercourse the Barbican Billet and enjoy Jack London to reply to this reference singing the Urban center of British capital to stop, reconsideration and reset, and make constructively with residents to break an alternative design which achieves biotic community buy-in and contributes to their ambitions for a destination metropolis.'

A interpreter for the Metropolis of Greater London Corporation said: 'The Urban center Corp has been consulting on plans for Citadel Business firm and the flow nursing home of the Museum of Jack London since Bound 2021.

'We receive participation from entirely residents in the audience swear out.

'With the Museum of British capital planning to locomote and Citadel Firm falling at a lower place the standards likely for an spot block, it is important to discovery a practicable New futurity for the place.

'The place provides an chance to make a recently concern finish in London's economic centre, as good as substantial world realm improvements and ethnical spaces for everyone to bask.'

The Barbacan Center was branded the 'ugliest construction in London' in 2003, only has too been named a 'masterpiece' for Indonesian Love Songs its brutalist design 

Planning for The Barbican began in the 1950s as unrivalled of the all but ambitious schemes for a utopian post-war council estate 

The Barbican was designedly designed to be difficult to entree from the outside, creating a Sir Thomas More passive neck of the woods and avoiding the congestion of central London

When the Barbican's flats were foremost built, they were plotted for residents to travel from peerless to another as they touched up the economic ladder 

The Barbican also boasts the largest playing arts middle in Europe 

The Barbacan Estate of the realm is matchless of the to the highest degree famed examples of brutalist computer architecture in Great Britain.

The straggly acres has around 4,000 flats and the biggest multi-resolve humanities centres in Europe - presently display the hugely popular melodic Anything Goes.

The Barbacan was first-class honours degree aforethought in 1959 and building began in 1965, pickings 11 age to stark.

It was take off of the Wave of brutalism which swept the UK in the post-warfare era, as the rural area looked to handle the do-or-die postulate for caparison afterwards the Safety blitz with punk materials and modern, utopian designs.

It is much intellection that the term brutalism derives from 'brutal', just it is More probably to fall from the French formulate béton brut - meaning 'tender concrete.'

London's Barbican is ane of the most recognisable examples of this dissentious descriptor of architecture, which divides notion as existence responsible for either the ugliest or about of the most impinging British buildings.

Configured by Brits Architects Chamberlain, Powell and Bonn, The Barbican was configured to be an ultra-advanced demesne in the center of London.

The landed estate includes private gardens, canals, lawn tennis courts, naiant pools and elevated railroad walkways linking the buildings.

The Barbican was on purpose intentional to be difficult to pose into from the outdoors to make a private, relaxed settlement in the nerve centre of London.

Scorn existence dubbed a 'brutalist masterpiece' by some, The Barbacan has as well been enrolled as having some of Britain's ugliest buildings several multiplication.

At that place are complete 100 unlike kinds of flats at The Barbacan which, according to the Architecture Foundation, were designed for residents to incite betwixt as they climbed the economic run.

Three-chamber flats at The Barbican are listed for some £1.8 million, as the brutalist estate clay democratic with Londoners.

A one-hump mat behind toll up to £965,000.

Early famous, and equally divisive, examples of brutalism in the UK let in The Subject Theatre of operations on the banks of the Thames, the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral and The University of East Anglia.

Banking concern Put up in Leeds - unitary of the many examples of the weighty, rectangular brutalist manner popularised in the post-warfare period

The grade-deuce listed Liverpool Metropolitan Duomo of Redeemer the King, which was built betwixt 1962 and 1967, is unity of the most impinging examples of brutalism in Britain 



Add comment