r/ukpolitics • u/North_Attempt44 • 16h ago
City approves towers despite 1,000 objections
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xwnl94dwro?xtor=AL-71-%5Bpartner%5D-%5BBBC+England%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_ptr_name=twitter&at_link_type=web_link&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_campaign_type=owned&at_link_id=34949F24-5BF7-11F1-A867-F39A54B89A0A&at_medium=social&at_format=link&at_link_origin=BBC_London45
u/tonylaponey 16h ago
I am a member of the Barbican centre and I visit frequently. I love the brutalist architecture and if I was rich enough to have a city pied-a-terre it would be right up there.
However I find it pretty ironic that people are objecting to new developments based on their impact on a building that was derided by most as an eyesore from the day it was announced. The city has always been an evolving landscape, and the 16/20 story towers they are building are absolute shrimps compared to some of the monoliths that have been constructed not far away.
No comment on the quality of objections either. These things are often crowdsourced boilerplate entries, saying exactly the same thing.
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u/MissingBothCufflinks 16h ago
I fucking hate NIMBYs. The same Barbican residents objecting to this on grounds it will impact the Barbican would have been VOCIFEROUSLY against the Barbican itself. In fact the Barbican would never get built in today's planning environment.
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u/colei_canis Starmer’s Llama Drama 🦙 13h ago
In fact the Barbican would never get built in today's planning environment.
To be fair I don’t think anything short of the trauma of global war could inspire the sheer ugliness of post-1945 modernist architecture, regardless of the planning rules.
Genuinely I do not understand the rehabilitation of Brutalism one bit, as far as I’m concerned the king was right when he said at least the Luftwaffe had the decency to replace our buildings with nothing uglier than rubble.
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u/MissingBothCufflinks 12h ago
The Barbican and National Theatre are among the best architecture built in the last 150 years in the country and I'll fight anyone who says different. I'll take Brutalism over Gothic Revival Suburban Housing, Polychromatic brickwork, Cast Iron Everything, Pebbledash/Stucco 'Palazzo' Villas, Mock Tudor, Terracotta panelling. Basically most of what the Victorians did (Butterfield, Webb, Shaw and most of their engineering projects get a pass) - take an idea and drive it into the ground in an orgy of naff excess.
Walking through the raised passages of the Barbican, cool on a hot summer day, is genuinely a wonderful feeling.
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u/colei_canis Starmer’s Llama Drama 🦙 12h ago
The idea that ornament is philosophically offensive has done more damage to the quality of our lived environment than any other single cause in my view.
That’s what I dislike specifically about Brutalism, it breaks the human scale and forces unnatural uniformity on everything which the brain reads as unsettling, institutional, the kind of Kafkaesque sense of being swallowed whole by a system which doesn’t care if you live or die. It’s the architecture of paternalism which cannot help but treat people as mechanised ‘human resources’ rather than individual people, and in doing so stamp any individual expression into a grey uniform slop.
As well as the philosophical ugliness there’s also the material ugliness, exposed concrete not only looks cheap as though the developer could not be bothered to finish their work, it is porous which in a damp maritime climate is terrible because it quickly grows algae and mould, and the exposed metal will often lead to unsightly rust streaks. Graffiti and malodorous liquids are much more difficult to remove because of this porosity, which is worsened by the fact we don’t really believe in maintaining things once they’re built.
The Barbican was ugly then and it’s ugly now in my view, its greatest architectural merit is as a warning to future generations: if you let architects design for the architecture profession rather than the people who have to actually live in sight of their buildings, you get fundamentally anti-human architecture.
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u/MissingBothCufflinks 9h ago
I find polished concrete incredibly satisfying both visually and because it is tactile. Calling the Barbican without ornament rather misses the point, it is elaborate in a way that constitutes ornament just at a different scale. I find your read of brutalism hard to square with a stroll through the barbican gardens; its an infinitely empathetic, human space with building in harmony with nature. I think its beautiful and has more soul than 95% of buildings in the city. Honestly, I think we just have to agree to disagree.
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u/convertedtoradians 7h ago
The Barbican and National Theatre are among the best architecture built in the last 150 years in the country and I'll fight anyone who says different
I've got to admit that - good-naturedly, you understand, and with profound respect - I find that absolutely baffling. Who would fight over something like the Barbican of all places?
I'm not up on my names of architects and I only recognise about half of the styles you've named there, but from a cursory review of the first image search matches, aren't they all just aesthetically much, much, much, much more attractive? Especially for people to live around.
I always assumed the Barbican looked like it did because it's cheap and nasty - vaguely industrial, like a nuclear power plant or something. Efficient, sort of, but not pleasant.
Walking through the raised passages of the Barbican, cool on a hot summer day, is genuinely a wonderful feeling.
Surely that's just depressing?
Not trying to change your mind, it takes all sorts, matter of taste, everyone entitled to their, &c, but... Why? Can you give me some sort of a hook to understand how you could possibly prefer that sort of style to anything else?
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u/MissingBothCufflinks 7h ago edited 7h ago
Suggest you google it, wiser people than I have explained the appeal. But many, many people love it
If you get a chance there are cheap guided tours which show you some of the incredible intricacies!
Honestly i find it harder to understand how anyone who has properly visited it can fail to love it.
Its basically the opposite of tacky in building form. It has substsnce, permenance and is somehow both a monalithic human endeavour and yet somehow in touch with nature. It has so much soul.
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u/convertedtoradians 7h ago
If there's any source you recommend who you feel articulates it particularly well, I'd love to get a recommendation! But otherwise I'll definitely take a look sometime. I might also take up your suggestion for a tour when I'm next in London if I can find time.
Clearly there's something I'm missing here, so it's probably worth me digging into it a bit to understand better.
"In touch with nature", for example. It seems utterly artificial to me - compared to, say, a great cathedral, where you've got the symbolism of space and light and spires metaphorically reaching up to heaven. Or skyscrapers, where it's about light and visibility, and height, that together sort of symbolise innovation.
The substance and permanence I grant you. That's a really interesting insight. I can't deny it takes up space in a very obvious way, and gives the impression of enduring. It feels more substantial than most other buildings. A big block of concrete that doesn't care about anyone's opinions, or its appearance, or the weather, or what anyone might try to do. It gives the impression you could drop bombs on it and it wouldn't be much affected. Like a bunker of some sort.
I can academically appreciate that militaristic sort of "appeal to strength" angle, I suppose.
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u/MissingBothCufflinks 6h ago edited 6h ago
Have you visited it, or are you going by photos? If the latter i can see where you are coming from but would appreciate you messaging me when you finally do take a tour!
Heres an article
https://heritagecalling.com/2022/02/28/brutal-and-beautiful-the-story-of-londons-barbican/
Genuinely the concert hall is my favourite venue in the world. The whole thing is just a joy
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u/Elegant-Leather947 16h ago
I'm not surprised they ignored the complaints if the best the bbc could quote was that it would be an "unruly neighbour". The proposal seems sound a 43% increase in office space, it would increase pedestrian access and comes with an upgraded plaza to boot.
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u/Obvious_Yard_1846 8h ago
Objections mean nothing anymore. You can make chatgpt come up with 1,000 objections in 5 minutes on any application.
I believe some guy made an AI app specifically for that.
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u/trypnosis 14h ago
I think the architects ruler slipped when working on the buildings. Every fe flowers it’s shifted to the left or right.
But as for the objections, as others have mentioned who is not going to object to competitive building that may negatively impact the future price of their housing .
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