The Barbican Complex, architecture and nature, London

The Barbican, London. Text by landscapelover

Barbican is an old word meaning fortification. It is a perfect name for this monumental,
modernist development in the heart of London. Covering fifteen hectares, and having 
taken twenty years to construct, the Barbican consists of more than two thousand 
high-rise and low-rise apartments with associated cultural and recreational facilities.

It was designed as a series of vast geometric blocks, all finished in the same hammered 

concrete, creating a distinctive texture and striking sense of coherence throughout the site. 

At forty-three storeys, its three high-rise towers were for a time the tallest residential 

blocks in Europe. But the Barbican is not simply concrete: its buildings are geometrically

arranged around open squares and gardens of lawns, trees, flowers, canals, massed fountains and pools.

Hidden away are roof terraces, allotments, even a wild garden. Accessible only on foot, 
architecture and landscape are linked together by raised walks, steps and pedestrian 
bridges. Cars and parking have been relegated to the concealed street level, with the 
Underground [London metro] in tunnels further below.

The Barbican was designed in the late 1950s to revive the largely deserted Cripplegate 
area of the capital that had been bombed to dereliction during the Second World War.

Despite pressure to provide commercial facilities, the City of London Corporation—

the public body responsible for this square mile of the city—decided on a largely 

residential development, wanting to attract a stable population of young professionals working in the nearby financial and cultural institutions.

It was thus never intended as social housing, but to some the Barbican feels like a 

modernist rendering of England’s early twentieth century Garden City Movement, 

which sought to create utopian communities for the working classes by balancing

 carefully placed housing with allotments and forests, and combining agriculture 

and industry, nature and the man-made, all designed on a human scale.

More obvious as an influence on the Barbican is Le Corbusier’s mid-century vision 
of high-rise developments that replaced urban slums with large, light-filled 
apartments situated in wide green plazas, integrated with public transport, 
shops, communal gardens and cultural resources.

The purpose and design of the Barbican was dramatic and brave. Yet its reputation was sullied by the general unfashionableness of modernist design and, more practically, by the impossibility for visitors of finding the major Arts Centre in its midst. 

Green roofs in Antwerp

 Designing greener cities is also deciding wether incorporating vegetation in 

and on top floors of buildings. 

The roof of this building was finished with a garden of trees, bushes, and covering 

climbers that provide shadow and help refreshing the arbor in the summer, creating a 

sort of small green park on the roof: a perfect area for socializing and enjoy nature.

Another benefit of installing green roof tops is that they also contribute to cool the apartments below.  A “green” cover with vegetation on the roof helps to prevent transmitting the excess heat from outside to inside the building, by absorbing part 

of the sun’s radiation.  Friendly in every way.

In picture above, you can see when someone does really like trees.  The space on 

the terraces of the apartments is considerably small, but if the feeling of having 

trees around is so important, there is always a wise solution. Owners here found a 

way to incorporate semi-mature olive trees in their terraced-garden.