Qualla: Barbican Centre

Barbican Centre: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nachomaans, CC BY-SA 4.0. In a 2003 poll commissioned by an advertising agency, Londoners voted the Barbican Centre the ugliest building in their city. Six years later, the same complex was Grade II listed for its scale, cohesion, and ambition. Both opinions are defensible. Designed in raw concrete, with a multi-level layout so labyrinthine that painted lines on the ground guide visitors to the front door, the Barbican Centre is Europe's largest performing arts venue and one of the most thoroughgoing examples of British brutalism. It also contains a tropical conservatory, three restaurants, a public library with two free practice pianos, and the home concert hall of the London Symphony Orchestra.

Read more: Barbican Centre on Qualla

Image: Nachomaans | CC BY-SA 4.0

Barbican Centre: A Gift from the City

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jknight1603, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Barbican was built as the City of London's gift to the nation. The site, north of St Paul's, had been devastated by World War II bombing - the medieval ward of Cripplegate was effectively flattened in the Blitz. Out of that ruin came one of the most ambitious civic projects o...

Read more: Barbican Centre on Qualla

Image: Jknight1603 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Barbican Centre: The Concrete Ziggurat

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris McKenna, CC BY-SA 4.0. Architecturally, the Barbican is what its designers wanted it to be: an unapologetic concrete ziggurat, with terraces stepping back as the building rises, plate-glass walls overlooking a courtyard lake, and a network of high-level pedestrian walkways - the highwalks - that lift v...

Read more: Barbican Centre on Qualla

Image: Chris McKenna | CC BY-SA 4.0

Barbican Centre: What Lives Inside

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:FA2010, Public domain. The Barbican Hall seats 1,943 and is the London home of both the London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Its acoustic has been controversial since opening: some critics found it attractively warm, others complained that it was too dry. In 1994 the Chicago acoust...

Read more: Barbican Centre on Qualla

Image: User:FA2010 | Public domain

Barbican Centre: Through the Walkways

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris McKenna, CC BY-SA 4.0. Getting around the Barbican has always been part of the experience. The highwalks raise pedestrians a storey or two above the streets, separating people from vehicles in a way that Le Corbusier would have recognised. In practice they can also be disorienting - hence the painted y...

Read more: Barbican Centre on Qualla

Image: Chris McKenna | CC BY-SA 4.0

Barbican Centre: The Wider Site

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris McKenna, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Barbican Centre does not stand alone. The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is on the same site, sometimes using the centre's spaces for its performances. So is the Barbican Library, technically one of the City of London libraries rather than part of the arts centre itself....

Read more: Barbican Centre on Qualla

Image: Chris McKenna | CC BY-SA 4.0

Barbican Centre: On Screen and in Song

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris McKenna, CC BY-SA 4.0. If you have watched the Star Wars series Andor and felt that some of its dystopian streetscapes looked unsettlingly real, that may be because they were filmed at the Barbican. The Slow Horses television adaptation of Mick Herron's novels has also leaned heavily on Barbican locati...

Read more: Barbican Centre on Qualla

Image: Chris McKenna | CC BY-SA 4.0