IDK

'A collaborative proposal for the revisioning of the Barbican estate, in partnership with Herzog & de Meuron.'
The Barbican is a unique and complex system of modern spaces and functions. This collaborative proposal was driven by the original project's quest for innovation in combination with an enthusiasm for new technologies to drive the delivery of excellent design. In partnership with Herzog & de Meuron, IDK sought to explore the potential of spatial and strategic cutting for a revisioning of the Barbican estate. Whether historic fabric, post-industrial vestiges, a buried street pattern, or a confluence of transport and pedestrian intersections, the proposal identified the mechanism of the strategic cut as having the power to open up forgotten spaces. The action of cutting reveals hidden potentials within fabrics, places emphasis on spaces for gathering and exchange, and creates visual and physical connections between previously separated zones. The cut's opening reorders spatial hierarchies, building new adjacencies and associations, and creates new points of access.

This approach, rooted in the physical, aimed to bring people, programme and function together across the estate to celebrate the social power of connection, creating public space through research and understanding. Systematic examination of the site background revealed a strategy of engagement which disclosed further prospects for exceptional spaces. This process of discovery was the result of a patient collaboration with the site, which allowed new understandings to be revealed and new active spaces to be defined, in response to the radical challenges set by the needs of 21st century artists, audiences and communities.


Project: Barbican Estate Renewal
Location: London, Barbican Centre
Year: 2021
Type: Competition
Collaborators: Herzog & DeMeuron