Archinect - News

Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama debuts 'Purple Hibiscus' at the Barbican, a reference to the site's material history

2024-04-12T16:33:00-04:00

The Barbican has debuted a new large-scale public art installation from Ghanaian-born artist Ibrahim Mahama.

His site-specific piece Purple Hibiscus, named in reference to the 2003 novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is installed on the facade of the Barbican’s central Lakeside Terrace. It uses approximately 21,500 square feet of fuschia-hued cloth that contrasts dramatically with the rough concrete exterior and overcast London sky.

Installation view, 'Ibrahim Mahama: Purple Hibiscus.' Image: © Dion Barrett / Barbican Centre

Mahama created the piece in collaboration with artisans from his Red Clay Studio and Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art in the city of Tamale, Ghana. It references the site's past history as the epicenter of the "rag trade" in Central London before World War II. Together, both the piece and architecture serve as a metaphor for the "power of labor."

Installation view, 'Ibrahim Mahama: Purple Hibiscus.' Image: © Dion Barrett / Barbican Centre

The artist describes...

'Here, the architecture wins': Rowan Moore on the inside-out quality of the newly-completed Battersea Power Station

2022-10-11T09:00:00-04:00

The project as whole also creates a highly managed territory of the sort that you tend to get in single-owner developments which, despite some funky moves by a Frank Gehry-designed apartment block, is fundamentally predictable. It threatens to cage the beast that is Gilbert Scott’s masterpiece, as might the array of retail logos inside. But, between the blandscape outside and the brandscape within, the power station is cussed enough to assert its own character.

The £9 billion final boss of Greater London adaptive reuse projects (along with the Barbican) is a story of inside and out for Moore, who sees the program’s housing element as an “awkward” mismatch when compared to WilkinsonEyre’s tastefully “sober” and restrained interior retail spaces that come dotted with “outbreaks of cautious fantasy.”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by WilkinsonEyre (@wilkinsoneyre)

The Observer critic also opined that it does offer a “striking contrast” to the mixed architecture of nearby Vauxhall and Nine Elms, adding its survival can be attributed to the growing influence of heritage considerations in British planning schemes. “If only some of the thoughtfulness applied to old buildings could be applied to the planning of new ones,” he lamented, “we might be getting somewhere.”

The Guardian picks up on the contentious debate surrounding modernist preservation in the UK

2022-04-04T18:44:00-04:00

A trio of concerned letter writers replied to a March 31st opinion piece by The Guardian’s Owen Hatherley in which the critic declared that “hardline modern architecture is now something of a cult.”

“A living city has to strike some sort of balance between avoiding the strangulation and depopulation that happens when you conserve everything, and the visual slurry that occurs if you let developers do what they like,” Hatherley wrote. “The result has been a new tension between different notions of conservation. This is a tension that serves mainly to benefit property developers, who can make money both from new buildings, and as 'saviors' of great modern buildings at the cost of destroying their original purely social purpose, as has happened in the privatisation of London’s Keeling House or Sheffield’s Park Hill.”

The Twentieth Century Society’s London Director Catherine ...

Oliver Wainwright on the Barbican’s big 4-0

2022-03-04T18:55:00-05:00

The result was a beguiling cocktail – part bastion, part brutalist hanging gardens of Babylon – and it stood as the ultimate expression of the modern movement’s search for a monument. The complexity of incorporating so many venues on so many levels across a 40-acre site has always made the place an infuriating labyrinth for the uninitiated, with successive decades of signage and way-finding strategies deployed in an attempt to ease the maze-like passageways.

The Barbican’s important birthday comes ahead of next month’s revealing of the winner of the City of London Corporation-sponsored redevelopment contest. The Centre is celebrating with a weekend of special programming including a guest DJ’d after party.

Previously on Archinect: City of London reveals shortlisted candidates for the redevelopment of the Barbican Centre

Wainwright also managed to dig up an original review of the Barbican’s opening from 1982, which provides remarkable insights as to how the estate, which was first commissioned by the city’s Court of Common Council in 1957, was received by the media.

“The overpowering imagination, skill and effort which has gone into the 25-year project becomes apparent immediately,” The Aberdeen Press and Journal wrote at the time. “It is engrained in the pine-clad walls, the polished teak flooring, the subtle lighting, the overall design. In fact, the Barbican has been described as ‘a haven of cultural perfection in the midst of the City...

City of London reveals shortlisted candidates for the redevelopment of the Barbican Centre

2022-01-11T17:26:00-05:00

One of the most important renewal projects in recent memory is a step closer to being realized in central London.

The city’s development corporation has officially revealed its competition shortlist of design partners for the highly-publicized Barbican Centre revamp.

Five teams were named to the list featuring a variety of international and local standouts that were tapped to compete for the chance to leave their mark on the capital and what is perhaps the country’s foremost example of Brutalism.

Adjaye Associates led the list in what would be an interesting follow-up to the firm's controversial UK Holocaust Memorial project currently nearing its start two-and-a-half miles away in Westminster. The firm’s bid is combined with assistance from Benetti Architects and PUP and joined on the list by another from BIG, aided by Avanti Architects and POoR Collective and one from DS+R, with McCloy + Muchemwa and Purcell as design partners. Two entries headlined by local firms round out the l...

Diller Scofidio + Renfro unveil designs for London Centre for Music replacement

2021-12-07T14:18:00-05:00

Scrapped plans for a new concert hall in London are getting a much-needed reset thanks to an updated design by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Sheppard Robson.

The pair originally was set to design the hall as part of a scheme sponsored by the Barbican and London Symphony Orchestra to redevelop the site of the Museum of London after winning an international competition in 2017.

Image courtesy DS+R/Sheppard Robson

The plan was also backed by the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and included a twisting geometrical glass-and-timber structure which featured a layered program of performance venues and music education spaces at a tune of £288 million ($381 million) before being axed quietly at the beginning of the year by the city.

The new design features an ostensibly simplified form beset with biophilic elements which run up the plaza-facing facade of the structure now dubbed “London Wall West” in reference to the existing structures at 140-150 London Wall that are said to be “at the end o...

First images of Diller Scofidio + Renfro's London Centre for Music unveiled

2019-01-21T16:45:00-05:00

Today, The Barbican, along with the London Symphony Orchestra and Guildhall School of Music & Drama, released images of the Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed London Centre for Music. DS+R was first announced as lead architect for the project back in 2017, and teamed up with Sheppard Robson, Nagata Acoustics, Charcoalblue and BuroHappold, and AECOM as the project’s cost consultant.

Serving as a new gateway for London's emerging Culture Mile, the Centre for Music will be situated near the Tate Modern, the Millennium Bridge, St Paul’s Cathedral, and will be in between two major new Elizabeth Line stations.

Concept Design: Centre for Music Exterior View. Courtesy of Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

Concept Design: Centre for Music Concert Hall. Courtesy of Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

“We want to unlock the urban potential of the Centre for Music's site at the southern tip of the Barbican by reclaiming the roundabout for the public realm, where the car’s isolating effects are keenly felt today,” DS...

Starry shortlist of architects for London’s new Center for Music

2017-07-11T20:38:00-04:00

The viability of building a major new concert hall in London has been widely debated, and the future of the Center was thrown into doubt last November, when the British government withdrew its commitment to contribute 5 million pounds (about $6.4 million) to pay for a business plan. The City of London Corporation stepped in with 2.5 million pounds (about $3.2 million) to allow project to go ahead.

The shortlist for the future home for the London Symphony Orchestra and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama was announced on Monday and consists of AL_A, Foster + Partners, Renzo Piano, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Gehry Partners, Snohetta , all of which have extensive experience working on cultural buildings.

The center which will include a concert hall with up to 2,000 seats, as well as education and training spaces, will be located in what is currently the Museum of London, designed by Hidalgo Moya and Philip Powell in the 1970s. The building is estimated to cost 200 million to 250 million pounds ($257 million to $322 million) to construct and is to be covered by private and philanthropic donations.

"The shortlisted architects have been asked to provide detailed designs as well as estimated costs, and the winner will be announced this fall."

Museum of London gives a tour of its new Smithfield site

2016-05-23T09:57:00-04:00

The museum is planning to move from its present landlocked home within the Barbican with no entrance at street level, into a cathedral-sized space, using the abandoned Victorian general market at Smithfield, next door to the famous meat market. “Our job is to make this the best museum in the world,” Ament said, carefully stepping around pigeon droppings and pools of water in the old market, which has been empty for the last 30 years while developers and conservationists fought over its fate.

The Museum of London have high expectations and high hopes for this monumental space, set to open it's doors in 2021. There is even a working train line running through the central space, a feature Ament is desperately keen to keep.

A tall order? Wooden skyscraper could become Britain's second tallest building

2016-04-12T10:23:00-04:00

Plans for London’s first timber skyscraper were presented to the Mayor of London Boris Johnson this week with researchers saying natural materials were “vastly underused”. The design is for an 80-storey, 300m-high wooden building integrated into the Barbican complex. The tower would create 1,000 new residences. Architects’ Journal described the concept scheme as “toothpick-like”.

Read relating articles on Archinect here:

A guide to London mayoral candidates and their housing policies

Is London experiencing a brick boom?

Design revealed for 1 Undershaft, London's tallest skyscraper by the "thinking developer’s architect"

A “terrible, enjoyable bloody business”: the influential films of Charles and Ray Eames

2015-10-16T18:40:00-04:00

As a new exhibition at the Barbican in London shows, by the mid 1950s [Charles and Ray Eames] were producing films and multimedia presentations that are as much part of their formal and intellectual legacy as their furniture or the glass-walled Eames house itself. [...] the Eameses never conceived of the hundred or so films they made as movies per se, or even as experimental films. “They’re just attempts to get across an idea,” Charles claimed

Watch a select few of the Eames' "hundred or so" films below:

"House" (1955):

"Tops" (1969):

"Powers of 10" (1977):

'Constructing Worlds' exhibit at Barbican explores buildings as neighbors

2014-11-04T13:31:00-05:00

Thirty years ago, the Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri complained that pictures of well-known buildings were often as conventional and flat as mediocre still-life paintings "but executed out of doors." [...] The new architectural photography exhibition at the Barbican, "Constructing Worlds," sets out, as Ghirri himself did in shooting buildings by the architect Aldo Rossi, to explore another approach [...]. Something very different, in other words, from "maximum clarity."

Museums Avoid the Four-Corner Effect

2014-05-15T13:37:00-04:00

At the Barbican Center in London, the Curve gallery is an example of an unusually shaped art space in the middle of a traditional, rectiform center. Its 90-degree curved design, wrapping around the back of the performing arts center's main hall, has been by turns a challenge and a blessing, and its function continues to evolve even after 30 years' experience.

OMA Partners Live!

2011-10-25T12:40:00-04:00

Rem Koolhaas, Victor van der Chijs, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka and David Gianotten will discuss their roles within OMA, and how new ideas are transforming the 36-year-old practice. The discussion will be chaired by Chris Dercon, director of Tate Modern.

OMA Partners meet tonight at the Barbican for their first ever public discussion

As the headline event accompanying OMA/Progress, all seven OMA Partners will come together tonight for their first ever public conversation. The talk, called ‘Show & Tell’, takes place in the Barbican’s 1,200-seat theatre; tickets are now sold out.

Rem Koolhaas, Victor van der Chijs, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka and David Gianotten will discuss their roles within OMA, and how new ideas are transforming the 36-year-old practice. The discussion will be chaired by Chris Dercon, director of Tate Modern.

The event will stream live from 7pm GMT tonight; to watch the live-stream please visit this link (warning; it is a facebook link.) The video will also be posted on OMA’s facebook page in the coming days.

Show & Tell is the first in a series of lectures by OMA’s Partners, which continues with David Gianotten, Partner in Charge of OMA Asia, discussing speed in architecture. Thi...