Until recently I had always viewed Barbican’s brutalist architecture as a vast concrete eyesore only good as the setting for a low-budget zombie flick. That was before I spent a week shooting there and provided with a special key! Well, not that special as all the residents have them but it did allow me into all the secret areas the general public cannot access.
It was there amidst the various gardens, high walks, peaceful pods and huge botanical greenhouse all populated by happy residents that I glimpsed the bigger picture and a vision of community that the Barbican Estate’s creators had imagined back in the 1960s. It actually seems a rather nice place to live!
