The Barbican estateUnlike Australia where the term 'estate' tends to mean shiny new McMansion homes in boring but nice outer suburban subdivisions, here in the UK they are typically ugly blocks of flats for poor people.
In the first few weeks of my first job in London, one day I had to accompany two councillors and a couple of photographers on an inspection of one of the city's worst estates. For an Aussie lad brought up in a big backyard, it was a pretty depressing experience to see the drab conditions that thousands of young English kids had to endure.
The estate was made up of several very long, high rise blocks of flats. I was told it had been built by English architects back in the 1950s but it really did look like something out of Communist Russia. In the corridors things like smashed windows, broken doors and and even a poo-smeared wall added to the sense of disrepair and despair .
The lift worked intermittently, meaning when it was on the blink residents had to use the stairs - some all the way to the seventh floor.
On the ground floor things weren't much better. The play area was a rain-soaked concrete pad with a few old bits of play equipment. The imposing blocks funnelled the cold wind straight through, making it even colder than the March weather at the time.
Teenagers in hoodies rode around aimlessly and in the far corner of the estate older lads took it in turns to ride a scooter along the footpaths, scaring the few residents about.
I was so interested about this depressing age of architecture and social policy I even hunted down a book on the subject, Estates - An Intimate History, which Jacq and I both read. It's hard to summarise the why and how of the housing estates, but it to be brief it involves a few of the following: early 20th century slum clearance, post-World War II rebuilding, architects with a love of concrete and governments set on building thousands of homes very quickly with little thought for quality or how humans might happily live in them.
One of the estates mentioned in the book is the Barbican, a large estate in the inner east of London almost right next to the City. It's quite famous for its Brutalist architecture (yes, it's an official term apparently). Out of curiosity Jacq and I made a pilgrimage over there recently to check it out.
It's almost futuristic, in a kind of menacing 1970s view of the future way with brown-grey concrete everywhere, a series of walkways in the sky and hard, unforgiving angles.
But it's also quite pretty. Almost all of the balconies are alive with flowers and greenery. A large conservatory houses palms, cacti and fish in several ponds. The Barbican arts complex attracts people to the centre of the estate by the man made lake and water-side cafes.
It's not necessarily so pretty that I'd ever want to live there. But it was definitely interesting and a lot more positive experience than that horrible estate I visited all those months ago.
Labels: UK
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