When you’re interested in Brutalist architecture in the UK, you’ll be hard-pressed to avoid mention of this place. It has become an icon of brutalism done well, not left to rot and used as a sinkhole. The Barbican Living website has a lot of information, far more than I can reproduce here and I recommend spending some time there if you want to explore the history and contemporary impact of living there. My desire to observe the atmosphere and environment of places like this nourishes my desire for feelings of security provided by solidity and scale. A want to be hidden in a herd of people in an estate, unobserved by the casual inspector but part of a larger whole. Taking the pictures was, at times, overwhelming, with an excitement to share a sense of awe with the other photographers I saw there.
My first view of the Barbican Estate in the flesh.
Approaching the estate, the towers impose themselves
The Barbican Estate towers are framed by the exit onto an elevated walkway
The maintenance of the window boxes is stipulated in the leases for the flats.
These towers are huge. Really imposing structures.
Lining up the tiles with the floors was instinctive...
So much going on here, the contrasts of light, shadow, sky, concrete, glass, water, flora...
The way they reach. I'm sure there's something in the curves that promotes the illusion.
The texturing was done manually with whatever the equivalent of kango hammers was, back then
No, I didn't replace the sky. This is just the sun and an EOS R and a 35mm lens.
The photons are doing so much work here it was a privilege to catch them
Tilted in the late afternoon sunshine
A static shot of hidden lives
Beautiful sunshine gives warmth to concrete
There's a hint of maritime engineering here
I love how we humans set the shape of the forms but the flow of the concrete and the chemical reactions generate unique patterns and details
The resilience of the surrounding concrete makes the fragility of these tiles all the more apparent
Defoe House is long
This reminds me of the Macadam Building but maybe it is a common feature of #brutalism
Imagine the dust, noise and vibration as the texture on the left was created
Treating those inside like parts of the organism, we circulate, giving life to the larger whole