Museum of Handheld Narratives: an embedded syntax of Barbicanian counter-detail

 22.1 barbican

The Barbican weaves an immersive atmospheric narrative of an alternate world through its distinctive language of architectural gestures and details. From concrete surface finishes to temperature dials to landscape figurations, every element is thought through deliberately and made cohesive. Consequently, the spaces of the Barbican are rendered with a poetic sensibility that weaves a dense atmospheric narrative of a promised Utopia, a haven, a sanctuary from the chaos and issues of the outside world. 

This rosy grand narrative belies a long series of counter narratives detailing controversies and problematic dealings that permeate the creation and operation of the Barbican.
The museum focusses on one such counter-narrative, and critiques the barbican’s ubiquitous use of textured concrete, every inch of which was painstakingly bush hammered. The absurd extent of this violent operation caused long term health issues for the workers, choking their lungs, damaging their hands and effectively ending their career. 

This small but potent counter-narrative is adopted as a provocateur to generate a new architectural syntax of counter detail; one that is not the opposite of the barbican per se, but rather is responsive to it, and creates the grounds for dialogue and exchange with it.

Simeon Chua