Barbican on a Sunday morning in winter

The Barbican is an unusual urban village on the edges of the City. Part within the old City walls and part without, it looks like a brutal version of the future as imagined by J.G. Ballard on a wet Wednesday in middle of the last century. Concrete dominates. The occasional austere-looking piece of greenery half-heartedly breaks up the landscape. An old church and a new canal. Otherwise it’s pretty much all concrete.

Despite that, the Barbican has a cosy feel. It’s brilliantly located and the flats and shared spaces are kept uniformly neat. There’s a quiet and relaxed air to the place. Almost empty on the Sunday morning I visited except for people who were gently jogging or feeding the birds or perched reading the paper with a coffee in the late winter sunshine. It has schools and cafes and even the odd Pub.

Most of these photos were taken on the raised platform that joins the various towers and blocks of flats and heightens the feeling of strangeness in the area or down near the canal.