3rd March: The Barbican, London

On this date in 1982, The Barbican Arts Centre in London opened.

Photo: Andreas Praefcke

1. The Barbican Centre is a performing arts centre in the City of London, Silk Street, EC2, to be exact, near Moorgate and Barbican stations. It is the largest complex of its kind in Europe.
2. Nearby is the Barbican residential area, which consists of three towers named after Oliver Cromwell, William Shakespeare, and the Earl of Lauderdale. You will also find the City of London School for Girls, the Museum of London, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the YMCA building here.
3. The area on which the Barbican stands was heavily bombed during the Blitz in WWII. After this, a lot of people moved out to the suburbs, and the Barbican was built to entice people to come back and live in the area.
4. When it opened in 1982 by Queen Elizabeth II, she described it as “one of the modern wonders of the world”, but not everyone would agree with her. In fact, it was voted "London's ugliest building" in 2003. The design is an example of the Brutalist style. The term comes from the French word “brut”, or “raw”, and refers to the use of bare concrete. This style of architecture was popular from the 1950s to the 1970s, not so much now. All the same, the Barbican is a Grade II listed building.
5. The name "Barbican" comes from the Saxon words ‘burgh kennin’ meaning ‘postern tower’, or possibly from the Latin ‘barbecana’, a fortification.
6. It was built by the firm Chamberlin, Powell, and Bon, which was created especially for the job. Originally, three architects, Peter Chamberlin, Geoffrey Powell, and Christoph Bon, all made bids for the contract, but had agreed that whoever won, they would all work on it together, anyway. They built the residential area first and then the arts centre. The firm had never designed a performing arts centre before, and when they were designing the cinema, they originally had the screen on the ceiling so people in the front row would have had to lie down on beds to watch the films.
7. Barbican Hall has a capacity of 1,943, and is the home of the London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The Barbican Theatre has a capacity 1,156. The theatre was built for the Royal Shakespeare Company, which was involved in the design, although the company no longer has a contract to be based there as there was not enough performing space and they wanted to go on tour. There is also the Pit Theatre, with a capacity of 200 and a resident ghost. A former plague pit was found on the site during construction. The centre also has three cinema screens, an art gallery and a library, not to mention three restaurants and a pub.
8. When they were built, the residential towers were the tallest residential buildings in Europe. Each tower is 123 metres, or 404 feet, high with 42 stories. The London County Council set down planning requirements that each resident was to have a certain amount of space in their flat, so to meet the County’s requirements, the builders had to keep building upwards.
9. The Barbican cost £156 million to build, £500 million in today's money. Its total floor area is 20 acres and the total area of the grounds is 35 acres. It contains over 130,000 cubic metres of concrete, enough to build roughly 19 miles of a six-lane motorway, and 75 miles of pipe work, enough to stretch one and a half times round the North and South Circular Roads.
10. The Barbican Centre is mentioned in Michael Paraskos's novel In Search of Sixpence - it's where the lead character, Geroud, lives. It also mentions a bar called 'The Gin Bar' loosely based on the Gin Joint bar at the real Barbican Centre.

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