The Barbican Estate: Symbols or Symbolic?
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Figure 1 Barbican Estate - original marketing brochure. |
Following visits to Las Vegas, architectural coupling Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown produced the seminal architectural study and foundational postmodernist text1, Learning from Las Vegas. This was an analysis of Las Vegas as an urban landscape and source of inspiration for architecture, something for which the city had not previously been seriously considered. The text is a strong critique of the modernist status quo of the period2. In this essay, the arguments of Venturi and Scott Brown will be argued against, using the case study of The Barbican Estate (b. 1965-763) in the City of London. While some of their criticisms may be valid in appearance, it shall be argued that the basis of the couple’s critique is neither a correct, nor desirable method for analysing architecture and is an ultimately regressive method of analysis which fails to adequately address political context. The essay will first note their analysis of form, then their analysis of symbolism and ornament and will conclude on their inadequacy in social and political analysis.
Before it is criticised, their analysis should be summarised. Essentially, the architectural symbolism present in Las Vegas, Venturi and Scott Brown suggested, was something the modernist ‘establishment’ had rejected. They believed this was to its detriment and explain themselves by dividing the buildings of Las Vegas into two distinct categories: the decorated shed - an ordinary shelter decorated through application of symbolic features - and the duck - a building which is itself a symbol (e.g. the Long Island Duckling, which is a building shaped like a duck). The latter of these is the category into which modernist buildings fit, they say; as in rejecting explicit symbolism modern architecture has become symbolic of nothing but itself and therefore empty and boring when compared to the modest ordinariness of the authors’ architecture - the decorated shed.
To evaluate this categorisation, we study the Barbican Estate; a 40-acre complex of housing and public spaces designed by Chamberlin, Powell & Bon which has been described as ‘the most complete realisation of a Corbusian vision of modern urbanism anywhere in Britain’4. In this review alone, the Barbican must be an appropriate example of the buildings which Venturi and Scott Brown criticise.
Structure as Form
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| Figure 2 The Barbican, 1975. |
A key argument within Learning from Las Vegas is the substitution of applied symbols in modernist architecture for an emphasis of a building’s structure and technology. In the authors’ postmodern Guild House (1960-63), for example, windows are explicitly symbolic (‘they look like, as well as, are windows’5) and are superimposed onto a flat façade. This is opposed, they say, to a tendency in modernist buildings where voids in structure are used to modulate light, therefore avoiding the traditional framing of a window and only implying the window. In other words, form and structure in modernist buildings go hand-in-hand. This is potentially the strongest aspect of Venturi and Scott-Brown’s analysis and can be applied to much of the Barbican Estate, particularly the high-rise flats. Throughout the development, concrete faces - appearing to be structurally integrated - are voided at intervals or across whole storeys to imply balcony or window space (see Fig. 2).
Symbolism & Ornament on the Barbican Estate
Where their analysis begins to fall apart, however, is where the Barbican does use explicit window framing and symbolism in other areas of the development. Arched bow windows and doorways feature at ground-level across the estate’s terraces (see Fig. 3). Openings of this form have been a traditional way of framing windows and doorways (see Fig. 4) for thousands of years6, so it would be extremely difficult to argue that the traditional symbolism of a window has not been utilised here. What differentiates the Barbican from conventional arch-work is that the arch tends to be inverted and occurs at the base of the window rather than the traditional top. Even here, though, the Barbican achieves exactly that which Venturi and Scott Brown praise in their own work ‘conventional elements used slightly unconventionally... commonplace elements made uncommon’.
Quite ironically too, the form of the arch, historically being a method of bridging large spans, is a clear expression of structure. Besides demonstrating that modernist architecture isn’t the first style of architecture which expressed structure and technology unapologetically, without explicit symbolism, this structural expression has been quite literally turned upon it’s head at the Barbican, with the structural arch placed where load bearing is completely unnecessary, almost as if the architects are challenging this popular conception of modernism.
Other structural features which form an integral part of the development’s image are the vast columns which suspend the estate’s residential and public space above road, car parks and water features. These columns along with much of the external walling are just one reason for which the Barbican is well-known, largely for their hammered texture (see Fig. 5). An extremely labour-intensive and arguably unnecessary feature, the hammered concrete of the Barbican challenges Venturi and Scott Brown’s claim that modernist architecture is completely rejecting of symbolic ornament7. It can be reasonably argued that this deliberate roughening could be an attempt to liken the material to a more naturally occurring stone or rock. In doing so, the architects provide natural symbolic cues to users of the space, exactly the opposite of Venturi and Scott Brown’s claim that the only ornament expressed in modernism is reliant on ‘knowledge of technology’ and ‘the vocabulary of industrial architecture’.
More than this, it was the architects original intention at the Barbican to cover terrace blocks with white marble, finish columns with smooth, coloured concrete and surface balconies with mosaic tiles8. Ultimately, these features were not realised due to their cost, but seeing as Venturi’s use of veined marble in Guild House is portrayed positively and as an explicit use of ornament, it would be difficult to argue modernists such as Chamberlin, Powell & Bon shun such ornament as Venturi and Scott Brown suggest.
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| Figure 3 Rounded window framing in lakeside flats. |
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| Figure 4 Historic example of rounded opening. |
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| Figure 5 Hammered concrete columns of The Barbican. |
The Social and Political
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| Figure 6 Initial proposed layout of the Barbican estate. |
Much of Venturi and Scott Browns analysis focuses itself around the image of a building: it's aesthetics. Aside from this, they make a point of avoiding social or political discussion of the buildings concerned, but ask the reader to avoid criticism of this fact, saying: ‘do not criticise us for primarily analysing image: We are doing so simply because image is pertinent to our argument ... not because we wish to deny an interest in or the importance of ... social issues in architecture’9. In spite of this however, they do make social and political assertions throughout their analysis and their conclusion is itself explicitly political.
Prefacing their explanation of the duck and decorated shed, the authors refer to the experiences and ‘emotional association’ related to symbols and ornament. Here, already, a weight is being attached to symbolism by associating it with a collective emotional mind which will presumably react to something like the Barbican in an instinctual way, not in a way which is shaped by politics or social conditions which it most definitely has been10.
One social criticism of modernist architecture Venturi and Scott Brown have but don’t appear to explore within their analysis is that it was outdated (at their time of writing, in the early 1970s) and no longer relevant, presumably due to the rise in use of the automobile during that period. They describe the ‘automobile-orientated commercial architecture of urban sprawl’11 as their inspiration for an ‘architecture of meaning’ and later refer to Guild House’s entrance sign being ‘big enough to be read from passing cars’12. The importance of the automobile was not disregarded in the Barbican estate, but while the authors’ focus on cars and embrace of the commercial have aged poorly in today’s era of climate change, the Barbican still appears well-considered due to its dual focus on the pedestrian along with its multi-faceted public program. All residential and public space of the Barbican sits on top of its car park (Fig. 2) and so pedestrians can walk safely and uninterrupted by cars across its site, so funnily enough a laser focus by Venturi on the car and individual has left their analysis outdated more than that of the Barbican’s civic modernism.
Concluding their arguments, and in spite of their initial assertion that the analysis avoids social issues and moralism, the mask slips in their final paragraph and they state that, through its image, modernist architecture suggested ‘social and industrial aims that it could seldom achieve in reality’13. We must ask: what aims were these? and why were they unachievable? Considering the couple’s embrace of Las Vegas’s commercialism and the common association of mid-century modernism with socialist aims14, it wouldn’t be a reach to read this as a dismissal of modernism purely for its socialist idealism. It’s also interesting that there’s an aversion to the political up until their closing paragraph; it’s as if they know this is the weakest part of their analysis and so have left it to the end to avoid elaboration.
Did the Barbican estate achieve these same aims? The site prior to the Barbican was one decimated during the Second World War and home to a mere 48 people; today it is not only home for over 4,000 residents15, but the site of a theatre, cinema, arts centre, music hall and school (see Fig. 6). In this it would be fair to suggest the Barbican had achieved something of social worth. Whether it achieved wider social and political aims is another question, but what the Barbican does do, through the icon: the image, the duck of social and political aims is offer hope and inspiration - a different way of producing architecture - and the potential for a better society.
Through a look at London’s Barbican estate it’s clear the analysis presented in Learning from Las Vegas, while correct in its focus on structure and technology and valid in interpretation of the modern building as one of an iconic image: the symbol of something; Venturi and Scott Brown fail to analyse these facts - or the various applied symbols which discredit their analysis - through a political framework which is adequate enough to truly understand symbolic architecture. The architecture of the Barbican has not become outdated; it remains a symbolic inspiration alongside it’s day-to-day use. Architecture which can do both of these things is surely worth more than a decorated shed standing for nothing.
1 Jim McGuigan, Modernity and Postmodern Culture. (Berkshire: McGraw-Hill Education, 2006), 22. 2 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1972), 87-103, 118.
3 City of London Corporation, “Barbican Estate history,” modified September 7, 2022, https:// www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/barbican-estate/barbican-estate-history.
4 Stefi Orazi, The Barbican Estate. (London: Batsford, 2018), 9. 5 Venturi et al, Learning from Las Vegas. 91.
5 Venturi et al, Learning from Las Vegas. 91.
6 Thomas D. Boyd, “The Arch and the Vault in Greek Architecture”. (American Journal of Archaeology, 1978) 82: 83 - 100.
7 Venturi et al, Learning from Las Vegas. 101.
8 Jon Astbury, “Everything You Wanted to Know About Barbican Architecture,” Barbican, accessed 29 December 2022, https://sites.barbican.org.uk/barbicanfacts/.
9 Venturi et al, Learning from Las Vegas. 90-91.
10 Jon Stone, “Government declares war on Brutalist architecture,” The Independent, November 2, 2016, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/euston-arch-declares-war-on-brutalist-architecture-john- hayes-a7393846.html.
11 Venturi et al, Learning from Las Vegas. 87, 90.
12 Venturi et al, Learning from Las Vegas. 100.
13 Venturi et al, Learning from Las Vegas. 103.
15 City of London Corporation, “Barbican Estate history.”
Bibliography
Astbury, Jon. “Everything You Wanted to Know About Barbican Architecture.” Accessed December 29, 2022. https://sites.barbican.org.uk/barbicanfacts/.
City of London Corporation. “Barbican Estate history.” Modified September 7, 2022. https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/barbican-estate/barbican-estate-history.
D. Boyd, Thomas. “The Arch and the Vault in Greek Architecture.” American Journal of Archaeology 82 (1978): 83 - 100.
McGuigan, Jim. Modernity and Postmodern Culture. Berkshire: McGraw-Hill Education, 2006. Orazi, Stefi. The Barbican Estate. London: Batsford, 2018.
Phipps, Simon. Brutal North. UK: September Publishing, 2020.
Stone, Jon. “Government declares war on Brutalist architecture.” The Independent. November 2, 2016. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/euston-arch-declares-war-on-brutalist-architecture-john- hayes-a7393846.html.
Venturi, Robert, Scott Brown, Denise and Izenour, Steven. Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1972.
Figures
Figure 1
Orazi, Stefi. The Barbican Estate. London: Batsford, 2018.
Figure 2
Hoffman, D. “The Barbican, 1975.” Accessed December 30, 2022. https://britishculturearchive.co.uk/the-barbican-estate-london-photos-1970s-david-hoffman/.
Figure 3
“Rounded forms.” Barbican Living. Accessed December 30, 2022. https://www.barbicanliving.co.uk/barbican-story/big-ideas/rounded-forms/.
Figure 4
Mackenzie, Frederick. Specimens of Gothic architecture, consisting of doors, windows, buttresses, pinnacles: with the measurements, selected from ancient buildings at Oxford. London: J. Taylor, 1825.
Figure 5
“The Barbican: a gutsy approach to design for campaigns.” Richard Chapman Studio. Accessed December 30, 2022. https://www.richardpchapman.com/2019/06/04/design-for-campaigns/
Figure 6
Chamberlin, Powell & Bon Architects. Barbican Redevelopment 1959. London: Chamberlin, Powell & Bon Architects, 1959.