Concrete, Water, Light: The Barbican Architecture Through David Altrath’s Atmospheric Lens

Concrete Towers, Water Gardens, and Elevated Paths: The Barbican Through David Altrath’s Lens

Photographer David Altrath moves through the Barbican Centre much like a filmmaker—studying how light grazes concrete, how pathways direct the body, and how water softens an otherwise monumental scale. Shot on Kodak Vision3 film, his series reveals the Barbican not as a fixed architectural object, but as a living system of atmospheres, rhythms, and human traces.

Completed in 1982 by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, the Barbican remains one of the most ambitious examples of high-density urban living in Europe. Yet Altrath’s images shift the conversation away from its reputation as a Brutalist fortress and toward something more intimate: a choreography between mass and landscape, between city and sanctuary.

A Vertical City with Human Touches

From terrace blocks rising over central greens to balconies lined with red flowers and everyday objects, Altrath captures the estate’s unique duality: enormous in scale, yet personal in detail. The sweeping façades are contrasted by small parks, playgrounds, and the daily movements of residents—echoing the architects’ original vision of dense housing enriched by generous public space.

Behind the layered horizontality of the apartments, London’s commercial towers sharpen the horizon, reminding us that the Barbican exists as a cultural island embedded in the contemporary city.

Elevated Walkways: A City in the Air - Barbican Architecture

Much of Altrath’s series follows the estate’s elevated pedestrian network — the brick-tiled arteries that connect housing blocks, cultural institutions, and hidden gardens.

He captures:

• corridors curving under low concrete canopies,

• slender black steel posts framing the city’s greenery,

• long walkways leading into forests of cylindrical columns,

• painted yellow guide lines recalling the logic of a city built above ground-level traffic.

These paths suspend daily life above the noise of the city — an urban design ambition rarely achieved at such a scale.

Water Gardens as Living Landscape

At the center of the estate, water becomes architecture.

Altrath photographs:

• tiered terraces,

• planted islands,

• fountains cascading in rhythmic patterns,

• ducks gathering on circular brick platforms,

• reflections stretching across the surface of the lake.

The water gardens tie together the estate’s horizontal and vertical proportions, turning concrete into scenery and movement into ritual.

Undercrofts and Hidden Depths

Beneath the terrace blocks, the photographer explores cavernous undercrofts where columns plunge directly into water. These structural elements, often unnoticed, become sculptural in Altrath’s framing — delicate arrangements supporting massive loads above.

The silence of these spaces contrasts with the liveliness of the public terraces, adding a cinematic tension to the series.

Fragments of Old London

Between the Barbican’s planes of concrete, Altrath reveals glimpses of:

• medieval foundations,

• church windows,

• fragments of London’s pre-war architecture.

These visual interruptions act as reminders of the Barbican’s origins as a reconstruction project on bombed wartime ruins — a palimpsest where modernist ideals rise from the city’s historical wounds.

Film as Architectural Memory

Shot on Kodak Vision3 250D and 500T, the series carries the warmth, grain, and atmospheric softness of analog film. The medium enhances details that digital would sterilize:

• aggregate textures,

• the meeting of brick and water,

• softened edges of monumental concrete,

• shifting tones of London’s overcast light.

Through film, the Barbican becomes both artifact and environment — a Brutalist landscape rendered with unexpected tenderness.

Written by Otávio Santiago, a visual designer whose work blends clarity, rhythm, and storytelling. Between Berlin and Lisbon, he creates across print, motion, branding, and immersive 3D environments.