The Barbican Estate is possibly the most ambitious architectural statement made in the U.K. in the 20th Century. The ambition and scale of its form, and the radicalism of its ideas, are shining examples of a British post-war architecture which offered a meaningful critique and alternative to the ways of designing and living in the cities of the Industrial Revolution.

In this episode we explore the Barbican: both through its onion-layered network of public and private spaces and passageways; and through its ideological foundations in the Modernist notions of ‘Blank Slate’ planning, and its relationship to the architectural style of Brutalism.