After the Festival Before rock 'n' Roll

摘要

Half a century after Kadleigh, Whitfield and Horsburgh first revealed their plans for London's Barbjcan site in the City, the first major book on the design of the Barbican is to be published by Wiley-Academy. Its author, David Heathcote, explains how amidst the doldrums and greyness of postwar London, Chamberlin, Powell and Bon landed the commission. Fifty years ago London must have seemed an anticlimactic sort of a place. The evening dances to calypsos on the South Bank during the Festival of Britain were long passed, Everest had been conquered and the new queen crowned. Yet the centre of the Commonwealth lay as blackened and derelict as it had been after the Blitz a decade before. Rationing, a housing crisis and traffic jams were a constant reminder of what had yet to be done. Despite the efforts of two postwar governments of different hues, nothing seemed to change. In the City only a dozen or so acres of bomb site had benefited from reconstruction.