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Barbican Arts Centre
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Barbican Arts Centre is an arts venue at the eastern edge of the Barbican Estate in the City of London, England. The London Symphony Orchestra is based in its concert hall.
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It opened in 1982 after a long and, at times, painful gestation which dated right back to the area having been badly bombed during World War II. It is owned, funded and managed by the City of London, the third largest funder of the arts in the UK. It was built as 'the City's gift to the nation' at an historical capital cost of £161 million, equivalent to almost £400 million today.[1]
The Barbican Centre was voted "London's ugliest building" in a BBC poll in September 2003.[2] Despite this expression of public opinion, the Minister of State for the Arts, Tessa Blackstone, announced in September 2001 that the Barbican complex was to be Grade II listed. It has been designated a site of special architectural interest for its scale, its cohesion and the ambition of the project.[3] A younger generation increasingly admires the brutalist architecture of its designers, Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, who also designed the Barbican housing complex and the adjacent Golden Lane Estate. The Project architect was John Honer, who later worked on the new British Library.
The theatre was built as the London home of the Royal Shakespeare Company, who were involved in the original design, but they left in 2002 to develop their own touring performances after a series of poor seasons. The theatre now stages a wide range of performances by visiting theatre and dance companies.
The centre was designed with a complex multi-level layout, making circulation difficult. In the mid-1990s a controversial scheme of 'improvement' in a folksy arts & crafts style was implemented to the designs of Theo Crosby of Pentagram (design studio). This achieved little and in 2005-6 a major refurbishment by architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris was completed in stages erasing most of the Crosby scheme and improving cicrculation and signage in a style redolent of the origianal 1970s brutalist architecture by, for example, making a feature of the dramatic rough concrete surfaces. introduced and a new internal bridge has been added linking the Silk Street foyer area with the lakeside foyer area. Also, a more generous pedestrian entrance from Silk Street, which had previously been dominated by an entrance for vehicles, was provided.
The Museum of London is also within the Barbican Estate, being at Aldersgate.
- Barbican Hall, a 1,949 seat concert hall. It is the home of the London Symphony Orchestra.
- Barbican Theatre, a 1,166 seat theatre.
- The Pit, a flexible 200-seat theatre venue.
- Barbican Art Gallery and the smaller horseshoe shaped, Curve.
- Barbican Cinema, 3 cinemas seating 288, 255 and 155 people.
- Informal performance spaces.
- 3 Restaurants.
- 7 Conference and 2 Trade Exhibition facilities.
The Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Barbican Library, both under separate management, are also part of the site.
Outside, its main focal point is the lake and its neighbouring terrace. The fly tower of the theatre has been surrounded by glass and made into a spectacular high-level conservatory. The Barbican Hall's acoustic is also controversial, being praised by some as attractively warm, whereas others find it too dry for large-scale orchestral repertoire.
- ^ History of the Barbican Estate (City of London) accessed : 11 January 2007
- ^ BBC News accessed 11 January 2007
- ^ Listing of the Barbican complex (City of London) accessed : 11 January 2007
- The centre's home page
- The history of the Barbican Estate
- "Good Old Barbican" - an opinion piece from The Guardian newspaper