The Barbican

Three years ago, while searching for Vitsoe setups, I stumbled upon Barbican. I delved deeper and discovered a building complex that was beyond my imaginations.

Young Fatih would definitely find it ugly; current me finds it beautiful. The estate was built between 1965 and 1976. And, since I first saw it, I started watching and reading everything I could find. There are a few YouTube videos where you can peek into the lives of the residents. And there are a few books as well.

Of course, my dream was to visit the actual place. Stay there for a few hours, and discover more about this grandiose place. When I had a chance to visit London a few weeks ago, I planned to visit the estate. I had to.

While researching, I discovered that Barbican was far more than I had imagined. The residents offered architecture tours, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to attend one. I invited two friends along, and we embarked on a 2-hour-long tour.

The tour, which took almost two hours, felt like it was just 10 minutes long. Our tour guide informed us with hundreds of small details, a few of which stuck in my mind in no particular order. Here are some of them (nit: all the photos where shoot with the Leica M11 + 35mm Summilux FLE)

• Someone could start living as a single, marry someone, have kids, the kids could move out, the residents could die all in the same place. It has all the amenities someone would need to live there.

• It's by design, created like a maze so people get lost. The tour guide even made a joke that there were no thieves in the Barbican, because once in, they don't know how to get out. (nit: our Tour Guide said a few times how he felt like he lives in a Prison where volunteers would pay to live there)

• There’s an underground parking garage for the residents, but half of it is empty and filled with 20-30-year-old cars whose owners are no longer known.

• Buildings are named after famous English people lived in their times (i.e: Shakespeare tower)

• The architects were inspired by ancient Egyptians and Battalions. A specific Egyptian Cartouche, resembling a rounded rectangle, is almost universally found.

• There are places that only residents can enter, some of which are completely hidden from the public. The residents have a key fob that can open doors and hidden gateways, allowing them to enter the Barbican even directly from the underground subway.

• The Slow Horses laundry scenes were shot in Barbican.

• It was literally built on Roman and the Medieval ruins.

• It contains a A 1000 year old Jewish burial ground as well.

• There is central heating only, residents can't turn them off in the winter, leading to weird states where it gets just too hot or too cold sometimes.

• The residents even have their own online forum sharing news/issues and recommendations between each other: barbicantalk.com

• Each building has details that are an ode to certain famous architects and designers, such as Le Corbusier.

• It's popular among media, architects and designers. Hence there is always a public photo or video shooting.

• There is a branch of a Music school inside Barbican, and some parts of the building resembling a tuning fork.

Barbican is full of treasures.

After reading this you might be interested to learn more. Here are a few Book recommendations:

• Barbican Residents: The book is mostly an interior design book, but only from people living in the various apartments in the Barbican Estate. Definitely a must buy if you're interested how the residents live there.
• Barbican Estate: Released in 2019, it's a heavy coffee table book with lots of gorgeous photos about the Barbican
• Building Utopia: The Barbican Centre: This book was released in 2022, and is currently the most up-to-date book about the Barbican. It is compiled by Nicholas Kenyon, the Barbican Centre's Managing Director 2007–2021, hence contains a lot of unknown information.