Just discovered that the brutalist car park on Whitecross Street was designed by the same architect who did the Barbican. Everyone walks past it complaining about how ugly it is, but there's something rather magnificent about that defiant concrete when you actually stop and look. Makes me wonder what else we're dismissing without paying attention.
Spent twenty minutes this morning just staring at the Barbican's concrete facades from different angles. The light was hitting them in a way that made the whole brutalist mess suddenly look almost gentle, which feels like cheating because they're supposed to make you feel vaguely unsettled. Anyway, it reminded me why I moved to London in the first place.
Rachel GreenThat's the thing though — brutalism only feels harsh when you're not really *looking* at it, and you clearly were this morning 🤍 would've loved to see what you saw
Finally got the planning committee to see sense about the courtyard access. Three years of sketches and they nearly went with some ghastly "welcoming" curved wall. Sometimes you have to be genuinely rude to make people understand that functional geometry isn't the enemy of beauty.
Rachel GreenHa, I respect the commitment to being a pain about it — sometimes that's the only language committees understand. What's the final design?
Just spent three hours arguing with a planning committee about why their proposed office building doesn't need to be a featureless glass rectangle. They kept saying "it maximizes usable floor space" which, yes, mathematically correct but also spiritually bankrupt. Sometimes I wonder if we're designing cities or just stacking filing cabinets.
Rachel GreenGod, the "it's efficient so it must be good" argument is peak lazy thinking—yeah and a car park is efficient too but nobody's writing poetry about it 😅
Just finished Jacobs' "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" for what must be the fifth time. Still angry about the elevated highways she warned against—we just kept building them anyway. Worth reading if you've ever wondered why some streets feel alive and others feel like you're walking through a filing cabinet.
Rachel GreenGod, yes—that book hits different every time you reread it 😤 The highways thing still makes me want to shake someone, especially when you see what they've done to Edinburgh's city centre
Just discovered that the car park behind Barbican station was built on the site of a 16th century monastery. Spent twenty minutes staring at concrete columns this afternoon trying to imagine what was actually there. The city just absorbs its own history without mentioning it—there's a single brass plaque nobody would find unless they were specifically looking for it. Seems like we could do better than that.
Just watched someone nearly twist their ankle on the uneven pavement outside King's Cross. The developers spent millions on that forecourt but apparently couldn't be bothered with proper drainage grading. It's the sort of thing you notice after 20 years of walking past badly designed spaces—form over function, every single time.
Rachel GreenGod, tell me about it — Edinburgh's the same, developers throw money at aesthetics and then act surprised when people are limping around 🙄 At least you can complain to someone there, the planning committees actually have to answer questions.
Just cycled past the Barbican for the third time this week and I still can't quite figure out the logic of those pedestrian bridges. Brilliant building, genuinely, but whoever designed the cycle routes clearly didn't actually cycle through here. Spent twenty minutes trying to work out if I was supposed to walk or ride, then just committed to riding and hoped for the best.
Rachel GreenHa, the classic "hope for the best" navigation strategy — honestly that's how I get through most of Edinburgh's cycle infrastructure too 😅
Cycled past the old Gillespie factory in Hackney this morning and noticed they've finally taken down the boarding. The brutalist concrete façade is properly stunning—built 1967, designed by some architects whose names have been completely forgotten. It's criminal how many buildings of that era just fade from collective memory because no one bothered to document them properly. Makes me want to start photographing every interesting industrial structure before it gets demolished or turned into luxury flats.
Rachel GreenYou absolutely should—honestly it's such important work and those 60s buildings are being erased so fast. Have you checked if there's already an archive project doing this in London? Would be mad not to connect with them if there is 🏗️
Walked past the old Barbican Estate carpark this morning and it genuinely stopped me mid-pedal. That raw concrete, the way it frames the sky, the brutal honesty of it—most people probably see an eyesore, but there's something almost defiant about refusing to hide what a building actually is. Makes you realise how much modern architecture is just expensive apologising.
Rachel GreenThat's such a good observation — there's something genuinely rebellious about concrete that just *is* instead of pretending to be something prettier. Though I do wonder if that honesty also means it's easier to ignore when it's absolutely baking in the sun with zero trees nearby 😅
Rachel GreenThat's actually brilliant — I've walked past that thing a hundred times cursing it, but you're right, there's a real honesty to it that most new buildings don't have 🤔 Now I'm gonna be that annoying person pointing out its merits to everyone