The Barbican

Summary

Three years ago, while searching for Vitsoe setups, I stumbled upon Barbican. I delved deeper and discovered a building complex that that was beyond my imaginations.Young Fatih would definitely find it ugly; current me finds it beautiful. The estate was built between 1965 and 1976. And, since I first saw it, I started watching and reading everything I could find. There are a few YouTube videos where you can peek into the lives of the residents. And there are a few books as well.Of course, my dream was to visit the actual place. Stay there for a few hours, and discover more about this grandiose place. When I had a chance to visit London a few weeks ago, I planned to visit the estate. I had to.While researching, I discovered that Barbican was far more than I had imagined. The residents offered architecture tours, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to attend one. I invited two friends along, and we embarked on a 2-hour-long tour.The tour, which took almost two hours, felt like it was just 10 minutes long. Our tour guide informed us with hundreds of small details, a few of which stuck in my mind in no particular order. Here are some of them (nit: all the photos where shoot with the Leica M11 + 35mm Summilux FLE) Someone could start living as a single, marry someone, have kids, the kids could move out, the residents could die all in the same place. It has all the amenities someone would need to live there.It's by design, created like a maze so people get lost. The tour guide even made a joke that there were no thieves in the Barbican, because once in, they don't know how to get out. (nit: our Tour Guide said a few times how he felt like he lives in a Prison where volunteers would pay to live there)There’s an underground parking garage for the residents, but half of it is empty and filled with 20-30-year-old cars whose owners are no longer known.Buildings are named after famous English people lived in their times (i.e: Shakespeare tower)The architects were inspired by ...