The Househunter

We’re going to the Barbican this week, a Utopian Brutalist dream which arouses passion and fury in equal measure. These stark concrete angular buildings flourished between the 1950s and 70s as London began to rebuild after WWII and concrete was both functional and affordable, which made it the perfect material.

But although beloved of architects, who designed from the inside out creating well-thought out living spaces, the muscular concrete exteriors have polarised opinion since they were first built.

Prince Charles spoke for many at a dinner in 1987 when he said: “You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe. When it knocked down our buildings it didn’t replace them with anything more offensive than rubble.”

And yet brutalism is often just misunderstood. Those elevated walkways, known as streets in the sky, were to connect the flats so that neighbours could chat while their children played somewhere safe and away from the traffic. Somehow when you know that the brutal concrete facade seems immediately more friendly.

Sadly, these walkways were often dimly lit and became places that people were afraid to venture into after dark so as a social experiment it didn’t quite work but it was designed with the best of intentions.

The Barbican, however, was one of the examples that worked. Everyone has access to communal gardens, there is water, a school and, of course, the theatre. The idea behind the development was that everybody would be able to “live quietly and with pleasure”.

Indeed, in a viewpoint completely opposed to that of her son, Queen Elizabeth, on declaring the estate open in 1982, called it “one of the modern wonders of the world”.

This flat, which is on the market with The Modern House for £950,000 has one bedroom and is a split level duplex. This puts me in mind of a quote from The Ladybird book of The People Next Door: ‘”These handsome flats were built as social housing for ordinary people,” it says in the expensive architecture books on the coffee tables of the doctors, creatives and architects who live in them now.’

This flat also has another treat – the barbican hand rinse basin that was designed specifically for the estate and won an award in 1966. Designed to be recessed into the wall and take up minimal space it was manufactured by Twyford and is still made in limited numbers today. It’s perfect for your tiny downstairs loo but you will probably have to wait until they manufacture the next batch as they never seem to have any available at the time you put your order in.

Well that’s been a bit of history lesson hasn’t it. I’d love a Barbican basin for my loo but they’re about £225 and I always have something more pressing to buy with that kind of money. How do you feel about Brutalism? I wasn’t sure I liked it until I researched it for an article I wrote for The Financial Times and once I understood it a bit better I became a fan. You can read the full feature here if you want to find out more.