[crabmusket]

I visited after having read Jane Jacobs the year before and becoming quite sympathetic to her vision of city life and active neighbourhoods through mixed uses. The Barbican felt like the philosophical opposite.

I read somewhere, I wish I could remember where, that some urban designers in the 60s had the feeling that people should spend their recreation time in their private homes rather than outside.

The Barbican felt like it had achieved that ideal of lifelessness, with bizarrely large and featureless open spaces, scant seating, etc. Of course that contrasted with the spaces around the arts centre which were bustling.