Barbican
Sonnet and I go to the Barbican to see, appropriately enough, the Le Corbusier exhibition. Sonnet introduced me to the architect in '98 when we visited his masterpiece Villa Savoye in Poissy outside of Paris. We had a picnic on the green grace.
The show is one of the worst displays I've seen, not nearly matching the opening statement which notes "Le Corbusier the most influential and important architect of the 20th century." On display is a mish-mash of various chambers showing uninspiring sketches, furniture and paintings which is not surprising given his best friends the post-cubism elite like Picasso, Miró, Calder, Giacometti and Braque. Only one room dedicated to his most influential works including Ville Voisin, a grand vision to plant 20 enormous towers into the heart of Paris's Left Bank adjacent to La Cité and Notre Dame. Mon Dieux - it would have been a catastrophe.
The Barbican, pictured, I find more compelling: the name medieval Latin barbecana, "outer fortification of a city or castle" which sums it up perfectly - inside, one feels surrounded and sheltered from the outside horrors. The estate was in planning from WWII and includes 13 terrace blocks, grouped around a lake and green squares inside the complex - immaculately maintained I may add. The main buildings rise to seven floors above a podium level, which links all the facilities in the Barbican and providing a pedestrian route above street level.
Coloured ground-lines guide us about. Some maisonettes are built into the podium structure. There is no car access but there are several car parks; there is also The City of London School for Girls, which is one of our best, if kinda creepy given its inner local. Along with a world class Arts Center (whose Director I once met for a role of some sort via Sonnet's uncle Shelton) housing the London Philharmonic and Royal Shakespeare Company, the complex contains London's three tallest residential towers at 42 stories. Ghastly and depressing are two words that come to mind.
Yet. And yet - it is a fabulously interesting work and one wonders: who on earth would live here? Indeed, given the Barbican's proximity to the City, there are bankers and financiers who enjoy a pied-a-tier or old-aged pensioners who moved in during the '70s when the thing was built. I am told on good authority that a two-bedroom flat sells for a cool £1 million minimum. The crow-like one would have been proud.
Prior to Le Corbusier, whe go to St Paul's for choir music then after to St John's for dinner, where I eat bone marrow and herbs then ox heart with horseradish mash. We spend the night in Clerkenwell at a lovely hotel whose premise dates back to the 16th century. Ho hum.
