To think the Barbican Estate in London is a masterpiece?

Yanbu. I went to DDS graduation there and was quite wowed .

Ugh, it’s horrible! No decent views and too many people crammed into a small area. 🫣

It’s great how we all differ so much. I’m a country girl who spends life on the farm and my idea of a heavenly retirement is a smaller country cottage with manageable land.

The thought of retiring to somewhere like the Barbican is honestly my idea of hell on earth. Though I imagine some people think the same about my plan!

I never used to like it, but I’ve come to understand it. I had relatives living in town houses in central London that are now worth squillions. They were thrilled to move to modern council flats with bathrooms, decent kitchens and heating.

There was a great deal of worthy activism in ‘60’s rebuilding. But it was, in many cases, an imposition on communities who were powerless to argue against the social ‘improvers’ employed by the state.

That is very true. I remember reading the memoirs or diaries of someone who worked in building conservation and in the 1960s in Bath, attempts to prevent some Georgian terraces from being demolished was countered aggressively with “you want to keep the workers in the slums. You want to prevent working people from having a decent standard of living” etc etc.
Also in many cases I think developers saw their chance to make large sums of money.

@MoiraPlunkett thank you - that’s an interesting article.

I should think many of the slums were too far gone to be refurbished.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/dec/02/thats-me-paul-pryde-moss-side-manchester

I’m inclined to be generous to post-war architects and planners. They genuinely thought there was a better life in the tower blocks, where for whatever reason they couldn’t provide new towns.

But they got it horribly wrong. Partly from a disconnect with ordinary people and partly from a small ‘p’ political view that the state knows best and that you should be grateful for what you’re given. There was a great deal of worthy activism in ‘60’s rebuilding. But it was, in many cases, an imposition on communities who were powerless to argue against the social ‘improvers’ employed by the state.

Not everyone was happy to be moved from slums as this broke up communities but as living accommodation, when they were new and fully functioning, council flats were an improvement.

Could the slums have been refurbished with bathrooms and electricity etc?
Certainly where the Chelsea World’s End Housing estate is now there were 30 acres of streets of terraced housing which was demolished to make way for tower blocks.
A flat 50 feet or so across Kings Road in one of the Victorian terraces goes for two and a half times as much as a tower block flat of the same sq. footage.
Also those who did the right to buy in the tower blocks have huge service charges as constant repairs are needed.

Incorrect.

The Barbican was never 'council housing' in the conventional sense but was owned and managed by the Corporation of the City of London, considered a local authority under the Housing Act 1980. This meant that Right to Buy applied to it.

Ugly as hell. Screams Soviet era. Theatre is very bland inside but you can see well no matter where you sit.

Don’t suppose she needs any more God children? Asking for a friend….😂

Who did you do the tour with? I’d like to do that

Completely agree. There is some awful brutalist architecture, but also some fantastic examples and the Barbican is one.

Ooh, thank you for that interesting link.

Ooh, thank you for that interesting link.

I've gone down a bit of a Barbican rabbit hole this afternoon. I think this is a much better example of why these flats are desirable: https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/69206650/?search_identifier=d57f4af9b4a74bc01a7b57ed33b991356cc1e164a930456e5a938a692742b69a

I used to know people who lived there. They are amazing flats , and feel very secure. And to have access to all the facilities in the Barbican, the public and the private ones must be wonderful.

The prefab houses were pretty good.
High Rise flats not so much.
It's ironic that many are now being knocked down and replaced by essentially the same thing.
Why didn't they just build decent ones to start with.

I have a friend there. It’s a bit marmite I guess.

Even flats now regarded as terrible were usually seen as an improvement on the slum housing they replaced in the 60s.

Immediately post-war, people loved the pre-fabs. But they were houses with gardens set out along streets. So people had their own defined space but still knew their neighbours and had a sense of community.

That wasn't alway true of new housing. For example in Glasgow they demolished the traditional tenements in the Gorbals (which were badly overcrowded and lacked indoor toilets) and replaced them with a brutalist development. These buildings were so poorly constructed that the water began seeping through the walls as soon as they were finished and when the Queen came to open then in 1972 they had to superglue the wallpaper to the walls of the show flat because the dampness meant it was otherwise peeling off the walls. The black mould started to grown soon after, the flats became known as the dampies and within 15 years they had been demolished because they were uninhabitable. Communities had been torn apart and people had been moved from one type of substandard accommodation to another.

www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/history/notoriously-dire-gorbals-flats-locals-23683548

@MoiraPlunkett yes my parents thought it was amazing! I remember being little and one day, wherever we were going, they said "Ooh we can drive past the barbican" and they were excited! And then as a little kid they said to me, oh you have to go in there and actually see it otherwise you won't understand ... then I first went as a teenager to the gallery, and I really didn't get it. I absolutely loved London at that time. But I totally didn't get it.

😂 at the poster saying they got lost entering the museum of London. So did I. I could see it from the street and I was baffled because it was right in front of me and yet, I couldn't find it 😂

I suppose the 60s just seems like such a crazy long time ago, now it's been explained to me I can see why it would be appealing to people in that era. Not now though.

Apologies.
I always thought it was privately owned flats.
(I remember Trixie in 'Call the Midwife" saying that her and husband were planning on buying one of "those new Barbican flats")

I'm talking about the actual podium. I know there's loads of stuff in the streets beneath.