IITheBarbican

Additionally, I recreated the walking sequences as I was recreating the images from Andor during my visit to the Barbican. Initially, the choice was intended through taking pleasure in recognition of the space as seen from Andor and having a personal record to share. However, I had recognised through this that the sequences of the walking in Andor are almost fully paralleled to how one would walk within the Barbican. It appears there is more freedom with blocking within the Barbican scenes, where Brutalism performs through hosting the act of a walking sequence. (Fig.15) https://www.barbican.org.uk/read-watch-listen/piers-gough-on-the-barbican https://web.s.ebscohost.com/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=e10b5f63-0ec6-4af7-86da-485193fe9c7f%40redis&ppid=Page- -27&vid=0&format=EK

The form of Brutalism as a configuration of a futuristic city through the Barbican has carried throughout its pedestrian routes. Piers Gough described Chamberlin Powell and Bon as “very skilful scenographers”, particularly when commenting on the sculpture park, the very location which was used in Andor. 27 This depiction of the Barbican as an architecture for cinema seemed to have traversed into the frame of film. The Barbican also carries a memorability not just through image, but discourse. Filmmaker and producer Don Boyd claimed that “discourse is what I feel the Barbican has always represented” 28 This emphasises the Barbican as a place for discussion, for people to conduct their own sequences perhaps with an underlying rebellious tone through history. The Barbican’s own cinema had an evolution of its own in becoming renowned for independent cinema, screen talks and discussion. The Barbican also serves as a labyrinth of architectural discourse, despite its monumentality it carries a flexibility in providing a structure that engages its audience. Perhaps it is the simplification of representing the Barbican as it is, especially in producing montages that do not reconfigure the sequences for Andor, allows it to succeed in recognising and specifying an emotional event which is still present when experiencing the space.

Conclusion

“This is what gives architecture its power: it is a form of extreme anticipation of a lost object and, at the same time, of retrospective nostalgia for that object”

- Jean Boudllard, The Future of Architecture

Reflecting on my visits to the Brunswick and the Barbican, it is now impossible to not think of these locations as experiencing a part of Andor. Whilst the use of real elements and locations within Andor have been harmoniously displayed against the use of VFX to ground a realistic setting, not far beyond the reach of what is seen when visiting these spaces, Andor has allowed me to find a space within the spaces of Brutalist buildings, simultaneously displacing its architecture yet recognising it as a place of dual realities.

Brutalism appears to carry this form of anticipation and nostalgia of a lost object, within both realities, in cinema and our world. One can also consider Andor further reincarnates this through Brutalist principles: exhibited space, materials ‘as found’ and memorability. Representing the Barbican and the Brunswick as a double reality whilst adopting the principles of these spaces without exaggerated reconfiguration plays with Brutalism as an architecture which bounces between the real and the virtual. Through the image of Andor, we apply our imagination to understand the space, we rely on blurring boundaries of realities to perceive Brutalism as an architecture suited within Andor, yet we cannot escape the recognition of its placement within our time. This allows one to question if Brutalism is the most successful form of architecture in our reality that embodied Futurism.

Though it is evident Brutalism has been cast out as a structure that does not belong, it can be suggested from this essay Brutalism has managed to traverse time since it was founded. Early regards to Brutalism as a futuristic form of architecture had been lost through its fall in the 80’s yet when the structure is displaced within a futuristic setting and re-framed within an image, we are evoked to gage the possibility that we already live within a distant futuristic city; concurrently we question if Brutalism will always remain ahead of us, only to be an architecture beyond fiction.

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