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Original poster

The Barbican Centre and other complicated buildings you get lost in

151 replies

Whiskeyinthejar · 03/10/2018 16:35

Does anyone else find the Barbican Centre absolutely infuriating? I can't remember the last time I was walking round and round in circles so much! I swear these unnecessarily complicated brutalist hellholes were built deliberately to get people lost.

OP posts:
itssquidstella · 04/10/2018 18:37

Bank Station. Whichever turn you take, you always end up on the Northern line platform.

Canary Wharf is awful too, I've been driven almost to tears there trying to find my friend - I could see he bar she was in, but just could not get there!

mumsastudent · 04/10/2018 18:37

top that Addenbrookes in Cambridge - the staff are use to telling random visitors directions. Its a mixture of attached buildings done at various times with random corridors leading off to heaven knows where. & don't think the test you need are going to be anywhere near the clinic you need to attend! It doesn't help that some departments shift clinics else where & Papworth is moving there too! & the car parks there are fun! (seriously its a good hospital but it is now like a city in its own right)

BehemothPullsThePeasantsPlough · 04/10/2018 18:41

I give directions to baffled tourists lost in the bowels of Bank/Monument about once a week. I can do it in three languages. Once had to help an English speaking bloke and was wondering why he was so very confused until he explained that he couldn’t read. No wonder he was struggling!

The problem with the Barbican area is there’s normally nobody else in sight to direct you unless you’re fortunate enough to bump into a copper playing Sardines. And being able to see the landmark you’re aiming for doesn’t help because there will be a lake, a fence and a locked residents’ garden invetween you and it.

StartingGrid · 04/10/2018 18:41

Now really concerned I won't see DP ever again as he's due at the Barbican for the first time tomorrow for work and would rather die than ask for help/directions Grin

PlatypusPie · 04/10/2018 18:57

Just remembered a very fancy, yet almost entirely unoccupied, hotel in China earlier this year where the lifts went to different, random floors so to get to our room from the lobby involved getting in one to a particular floor, getting out and walking across an upper lobby, getting another lift to another floor, getting out and getting into the lift next to it to get to our floor. And then along a verrry long corridor. I found myself walking through a lobby full of conference delegates, clad fetching in a swimming cossie and fluffy dressing gown after misrouting myself.

Heuschrecke · 04/10/2018 19:02

I have nightmares that are like that, PlatypusPie, and I wake up sweating and panicking. I had no idea it exists IRL!!

PlatypusPie · 04/10/2018 19:14

At the point at which I was wandered through the lobby, Heuschrecke, I had given up caring ! My DH thought it was hilarious.

April2018mom · 04/10/2018 20:09

I got lost at the 02 arena a few years ago. I was there for a concert at night time with some friends. We were trying to find a decent restaurant for a quick drink pre concert. In the end I politely asked for directions to the closest place to have something quickly. I printed out a map of the venue just in case I needed to have one at hand. But I left it on the dashboard of my car. Finding my way around the building was not so easy.

Threehoursfromhome · 04/10/2018 20:40

Another vote for Birmingham New Street. I used to know it pretty well, but since it was redeveloped, I can never find the right exit and end up doing laps around the main atrium. Having known it once makes it worse because there are these occasional, disorientating flashes of recognition, and then you turn a corner and nothing is like you remember.

Rebecca36 · 04/10/2018 21:45

Oh yes, I was totally lost in the Barbican centre with my small son many years ago. We were going to an exhibition. Found ourselves walking around the floors of a block of flats for ages! Dreadful place to negotiate. Imagine if you lived there? You'd be spending half your life trying to find your way home.

Since then I did see a play in the Pit but I was with others who knew where they were going.

JenFromTheGlen · 04/10/2018 22:25

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

MinaPaws · 04/10/2018 22:34

I hate the Barbican. I know someone who sang there once and told me a man in the audience had a heart attack during the concert. The ambulance crew arrived immediately but spent so bloody long trying to find how to get in and where to go that the man died.

I also know people who say that Guildhall students and staff suffer higher rates of stress and depression than those at other top music schools (not sure where they got the info, but they did work there) because it's such a people-unfriendly place to work all day long. It has to be the least intuitive building ever designed. And it's ugly as sin.

Wiifitmama · 04/10/2018 22:37

I go to the Barbican a fair amount and can navigate to the few places I go from the station. But recently I had to take my son to a music exam in the girls school there. Oh my god....we could see the bloody place but getting to it was impossible. On the journey we kept picking up other lost parents until there was a large group of us all sticking together for safety! With multiple stops for directions we eventually made it. Then as I went back to the station after dropping him off, there were endless other parents and kids desperately trying to find their way and very late for the exam. I think the kids should have got distinctions just for finding the place!

PickAChew · 04/10/2018 22:40

Fenwick in Newcastle before they reorganised the escalators into sensible columns. 5 floors of shopping, entrances on 3 of those floors and the escalator placement used to be completely random. Getting lost in Fenwick's was a rite of passage for anyone new to the city, back in the day.

PickAChew · 04/10/2018 22:54

House of Fraser in the Metrocentre

I always take a wrong turn trying to get to the lifts on the ground floor, usually via utterly baffling kids' clothes.

I spent a fruitless 20 minutes trying to find the ladies' loos in Robbs in Hexham, once.

And agree about Jenners. I knew where the loos were, there, but stupidly took a lift that didn't stop on that floor. Was so disappointed to find that they'd been given the full HOF treatment, when I eventually did find them.

SamanthaJayne4 · 04/10/2018 23:08

I agree about Birmingham New Street. I was there last week getting lost. Also have problems in the Bull Ring Shopping Centre. Can't find my way out easily. I also get hopelessly lost in London.

April2018mom · 04/10/2018 23:20

Also my local shopping centre is confusing at times. I spent several minutes trying to find a particular shop that sold cards for Christmas this morning. Eventually I found one in there but not after asking for help.

donajimena · 04/10/2018 23:49

Frigliana is another one. I've eaten at a fabulous tapas bar there. Went back the following year.. couldn't find it. So we went to a restaurant with beautiful views down to Nerja... went back the following year... we couldn't find that either. I usually have a great sense of direction. Both restaurants are apparently still in existence

Vinorosso74 · 05/10/2018 00:09

Myself and some friends/colleagues got lost in the Barbican centre years back. We went to Pizza Express for lunch but couldn't find our way back to the office. It was very funny but we just kept missing the door for the staircase we needed. After the second time the route is now etched on my brain but I haven't needed it for 15 years....
Also got lost in Jenners in Edinburgh.

liquidrevolution · 05/10/2018 09:20

Ikea reading by J12 of the M4. There is no yellow brick road and you have to go upstairs to start the maze and halfway through go back down the stairs - but thats not the worst thing about it.

Its the car park.

It is the seventh circle of hell. You have to go up to go down in some places and people are literally trapped in their cars for hours on a regular basis.

I park in Dunelm opposite Blush

Ratonastick · 05/10/2018 09:49

My boss and I once missed a meeting after deciding to take a short cut through the Barbican. Two middle aged people in suits who were genuinely a bit panicky and getting a tiny bit tearful but trying to keep a brave face on for each other.

Can I also nominate Charing Cross tube? There are great swathes of it down there and random exits and entrances all over the place.

groundcontroltomontydon · 05/10/2018 10:01

The experience of finding the Barbican box office and getting out of the place was so frustrating - at one point I thought I'd have to swim to freedom - that I didn't go to the event for which I'd bought the ticketBlush

soupforbrains · 05/10/2018 10:31

oh I know another thing!

The subway/underpass network that's under MArble Arch!

it's a complex labyrinth, There are maps but they're largely useless and it's all just concrete so no hope of landmarks. I'm sure many people have never found their way out.

PuppyMonkey · 05/10/2018 10:32

Debenhams Nottingham.

RavenLG · 05/10/2018 11:38

Fenwick in Newcastle before they reorganised the escalators into sensible columns

I don't think I've been in for many many years (pre-escalators maybe) and I agree. It's like the exits are contstantly moving. It's horrible!