All posts tagged: Barbican

Barbican calthemites

The Barbican endures

Brutalist architecture mostly leaves me cold or repulsed but I’ve always had a liking, verging on an affection, for the Barbican Estate, perhaps because I worked there for six years and got to know its vastness, its labyrinths, and its hidden byways. I’ve always thought that if there was one structure in London that would survive nuclear war or natural catastrophe it would be the Barbican.

kjartansson second movement

Colleen and Judy go boating

If, on a hot summer’s afternoon, you come across a couple of women in Edwardian dress kissing in a boat on the Barbican lake, the sight will tend to draw you up short. Prim kissing and no caresses, I should add – no sweaty, urgent clinches in the hull.