Housing for the 10%: Barbican's Social Housing... for the Affluent?!

This past summer my friend Casey and I lived in an old pre-war two bedroom apartment in New York. The floors creaked, the air conditioner leaned at a precarious 45 degree angle outside of the window, and our kitchen perpetually smelled of noodles and a decade-old layer of dirt. We didn't mind. We were working all day, going out at night, and in-between, enjoying the fact that we had inherited a piano (the prior tenant was an opera singer) and closets and shelves full of strange hats, books, and artwork.

"Acceptable" urban housing for two twenty-somethings is one thing. Appropriate standards for family housing is another.

In London, social housing has had many reincarnations due to calamity and circumstance. My interest in London's housing was peaked after visiting the Barbican Estate on a walk through the city with my studio professor.

To preface, Barbican is not just a social housing project, it is a 40 acre microcosm within the city of London. Planned as part of the Greater London Plan conceived of after the Blitz in London circa World War II, Barbican (literal translation, "fortress" or "wall") was designed by Chamberlin, Powell, & Bon as a large "discrete" development suitable to “affluent” tenants. Planned in the 1950's and realized in its entirety in the late 1970's, I would argue that Barbican's significance lies in its relevance as a post-war planning project that continues to thrive.

In the days of pre-consumerism, Barbican's plan was both forward thinking and unforgiving in its scale, architectural, and social ambitions. CP&B's strategy for Barbican included modern ideas for parking facilities, pedestrian routes, garbage disposal systems, district heating, cultural components such as a state-of-the-art arts center, as well as a hierarchy based on tenant wealth and status. Building on a literal tabula rasa, the architects were able to reduce the density of housing at the center of the design to create the illusion that the development was a walled city

Contextually, Barbican is significant in its modernist ideals regarding the provision for a "machine for living" that also highlights the significance of the individual as well as their immediate community [found in the inclusion of LeCorbusier's double-height spaces and Pilotis, as well as in the Smithson's "Brutalist" architectural style/social agenda and their idea for elevated walkways that seemingly become "streets in the air"]. Furthermore, the dialogue regarding architecture “representative” of the individual is best exemplified by a wide range of modern, "affluent" flat specifications indicated by the negation of function, specifically in moments such as the use of a symbolic barrel-vaulted bedroom in the two and three-bedroom flats.

From a personal standpoint, what amazes me regarding Barbican is its successful manifestation of dualities. Residential macrocosm and urban microcosm, historical monument and living organism, Barbican seems to balance the past as it continues to adapt to the future; a characteristic that few social housing projects have been able to achieve.

A testament to this is Barbican's continued popularity. While the Estate is an elusive, forty-acre mystery to the outsider, insider’s consider Barbican a residential masterpiece for varied living experiences. Currently, architects, artists, journalists, and academics flock to what is often hailed as a “flawed masterpiece. In a recent article in Time Out, a current resident of Barbican explains; “Living here is like a secret…Only the people who live here know how great it is. It’s a real institution and everyone else thinks it’s just a concrete block they walk past.”

To the visitor, what is most immediately impressive about Barbican is its realization of a utopic residential vision. While many social housing blocks are best described as non-descript, derelict, and subsequently neglected, he/she merely has to navigate past the fortress-like exterior and into one of the interior courtyards to realize that Barbican is a world cherished by the public, private, and semi-public realms it carefully negotiates. Upon my visit this morning, I was struck by the exterior/interior contrast of bustling urban city and quiet, surreal landscape. In my walk this morning from Fore Street to the Andrewes Highwalk portion of Barbican, I was confronted with a central courtyard evocative of a modern Italian garden, framed by an eight-story high residential building. The most striking element of the scene was a large, concrete structure that projected from Brandon Mews over the central lake, serving as a dramatic water source for the otherwise stagnant mix of water, vegetation, and concrete infrastructure that runs the entire length of the Andrewes House and continues to wrap around the Southern half of the Estate.

In conclusion, while Barbican may not fairly be compared with low-income housing projects that favor functionality rather than affluence, I think it is an important large-scale housing model that requires further social and architectural consideration.

Further reading: Barbican: Penthouse Over the City by David Heathcote

...Stay tuned as I will discuss Adelaide Wharf, a contemporary social housing project (completion: December 2007) in my next entry... surrounded by towers.