Future Cities Forum interviews Dr Pip Simpson on Barbican Renewal

View to Barbican lake, the church of St Lawrence Jewry, City of London Girls School, the Guildhall and St Paul's from the Grade II listed Brutalist icon, the Barbican Centre which is undergoing a visionary renewal programme

Future Cities Forum was delighted to interview Dr Philippa ('Pip') Simpson, Director for Buildings and Renewal, at the Barbican Centre, to discuss the new building plan and renewal programme which aims to attract new and diverse audiences.

In her new role, to which she was appointed to last year, Pip has an extensive brief including overseeing the operations and facilities management of the Barbican and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, as well as leading on the bold and visionary new plans for the Barbican Renewal Programme, a once-in-a-generation opportunity to radically reimagine what an arts and culture centre can be. The Barbican says its Renewal Programme will 'care for the things people love about the Barbican, while bringing underused spaces into new creative use, all without adding a single square metre of extra building.' 

Pip joined the Barbican from the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) where she was on the Executive Board as Director of Design, Estate and Public Programme, leading on major capital projects, exhibitions, heritage conservation and restoration works and design and brand initiatives. She started her career in the cultural sector as a curator at Tate before moving to Royal Museums Greenwich to run an international touring exhibition programme. During the past ten years she has delivered transformative projects at every scale, including the V&A's Exhibition Road Quarter, the new Photography Centre and most recently Young V&A in Bethnal Green.

Above: Barbican Centre exterior viewed from piazza by Defoe House

The Barbican describes the grade II listed Brutalist icon in the City of London as one of the UK's architectural treasures and unlike anything London had ever seen before. It was part of a visionary 1950s plan from architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, designed to radically transform how we experience buildings and cities.

Today the Barbican Centre attracts almost 2 million visitors a year, as well as thousands of artists and creatives, and the wider Barbican complex is home to a community of around 4,000 residents. However, many of the Barbican Centre's key building systems are over 40 years old and require an urgent programme of replacement and upgrade. 

Dr Simpson described the challenge:

'The renewal programme is urgent as the building is forty years old and facing closure in whole or at least part and we do need to shift our audiences. It was originally designed for a different audience decades ago and now the expectations from it as an arts centre have changed. We are looking to welcome more diverse audiences and we need to green up fast as well to ensure sustainability.

'You can see this challenge with the conservatory in the building. It is not functioning in the most environmental way. The glazing is failing for example. It needs to be a lot greener in how it performs and become more sustainable. It functions as our green space for well-being in the heart of the City of London and it is a free space. However, it is often hired out and we need to find a way where we can allow for events, but also invite the public in.

'Many people talk about the Barbican as a fortress site and I think to some extent that is true. But to make it more accessible is a huge undertaking without undermining the original idea for the centre. It has an oasis quality in the City of London but our wayfinding project will help. I call it 'tube to toilet'! We are going through a research phase at the moment and bringing in a design team next year. The project will be transformative but will include sensitive adjustments to the front and back doors. The important question is how we allow better routes through to the lake side which is our best expression of the Centre. The wayfinding project will work both on the perceptual but also the physical level.

Above: exterior concrete of Barbican Centre wrapped in fabric as part of 'Purple Hibiscus' project

'I know that people can find the Barbican to be both concrete and brutal, but it is my favourite building in London. It has I think gone through an evaluation by most people in their minds. Some hate it but there are many fans of brutalism. You have to understand the democracy of the building. The term brutalism refers to the meaning of raw material and space. The building as we see it is really a container and it is what you do within it that is important. I think the commitment to concrete everywhere in the building is really impressive and I hope we can help people to continue to understand the quality of it.

'We are committed to pushing forward projects like the recent 'Hibiscus' and continuing with playful textural programming. Certainly we are attracting wider audiences and want the City of London's 'Destination City' project to work. We are a harbour of that, being the one place that drives footfall in the City. It is about creating a life balance for those that commute and also that live in London, as well as drawing in new audiences from across the UK. We have a captive audience but want more young people to experience our programmes. Creativity is recognised as a world skill and that shouldn't exist in a separate world to commerce in the City. We want young audiences to come and do as well as see. They do already sit in our foyer on their laptops but we want to get them more involved in our programming and start a dialogue with them. We have a solid five-year programme of work on renewal that will open the centre up to new audiences. The Barbican at the moment does not have a huge international audience but that is one hundred per cent in our eyeline. Our programme is already global and the building is an international icon. We want to leverage that.'

The Barbican announced the design team to work on the Renewal Project in April 2022, to be led by architects Allies and Morrison and Asif Khan Studio, working alongside engineering and sustainability consultancy Buro Happold; heritage experts Alan Baxter Ltd; theatre, acoustic, and digital consultancy Charcoalblue; landscape architects Hood Design Studio, and lighting design agency les éclaireurs. 

Above; the lake -facing facade of Barbican Centre, wrapped in the 'batakaris' designs of artist Ibrahim Mahama

Future Cities Forum included Head of Visual Arts at the Barbican, Shanay Jhaveri, in our recent 'Cultural Cities' discussion (May 2024) to talk about the current 'wrapping' of the cultural centre and he described how he hoped this and other art initiatives would help to 'cross the threshold of spaces' in the 1950's development and begin to 'speak to the breadth of audiences' coming to the centre.

The 2,300 sq. m of cloth, which has engulfed the Barbican in a vibrant purple colour, is embroidered with ‘batakaris’—a traditional Ghanian men’s garment originating in the north of the country. The fabric has been hand-woven together in a collective effort with hundreds of craftspeople from Tamale, northern Ghana. The work also references the 2003 novel, ‘Purple Hibiscus’, by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In the book, the purple hibiscus symbolises freedom and hope for oppressed people.  

Shanay said:

'The architecture of the Barbican can be divisive but artists gravitate to it and I wanted to give them the building as a canvas. The building has a heritage but we can use it to confront issues collectively today. I wanted to look at the activation of the lake side terrace and invited the Ghanian artist Ibrahim Mahama.for a site visit and he came back with a drawing of the installation that is currently on display. He is very interested in textiles that have history embedded in them but he also wanted to respond to the heritage of the site with the area around the Barbican being the centre of the rag trade post world war two.

'Looking at the concrete of the Barbican building, we noticed it was bush-hammered by hand and although we know nothing of who did the work at the time, we wanted to reference that in the material that wraps the building through the hand-stitching of the fabric. Four-hundred artisans were involved in the artwork in Ghana and it created the economy for the project which was supported by the Barbican. Traditional smocks or batakaris are handed down through families with traces of the wearer and they have reached the end of their life cycles so used here in the art work. For sustainability purposes they will be taken back to Ghana and re-used for other projects in the community where Ibrahim has established studios and other community spaces.

'This is the type of project that I want to highlight at the Barbican. We want to work with diverse and international artists providing them with a platform and partner with them. I want these artists and their work to speak to audiences in London and encourage those audiences to come back to the Barbican to see our commitment level to those artists.

'The current twenty-four hour 'destination city' idea is very much a part of what we are doing here, encouraging families not just to come and eat here at our restaurants but get involved in projects which are also open to local schools this summer. We want to create dynamic spaces with art that goes beyond ticketed events and we are also furthering dialogue through the digital assets that we create such as our videos of the project and enjoy seeing how it is all taken up online through social media.'

Image: Wrapping the Barbican, courtesy Buro Happold

The physical wrapping of the Barbican was a considerable challenge that required the expert skills of engineering firm, Buro Happold. Partner, Andrew Wylie, at our May 'Cultural Cities' forum explained:

'We treated the project as if we were 'upholsterers', attaching a backing to the material to help it withstand the elements. As the Barbican is a listed building we could not fix any of the material to it. You cannot drill into concrete because then you start to create problems. So we added weights and sub frames to the material and hundreds of kilometres of ratchet straps.

'There was the challenge of wind speeds to deal with, so we worked on the risk management as if we were sailors, enabling the fabric to be lifted and lowered with the wind speed, like trimming sails.'

Above: Barbican Centre visitors in July 2024

The Barbican has now announced its new exhibitions for early 2025 including the first international retrospective of Noah Davis and a new Curve commission from Citra Sasmita.

The Barbican states:

'In February 2025, Barbican Art Gallery will host the largest institutional survey to date of the work of late American artist Noah Davis (1983 – 2015). Bringing together over 50 works spanning the artist’s career, this major touring exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of Davis’ extraordinary practice in painting as well as his work in curating and community-building as co-founder of The Underground Museum.  

'Based primarily in Los Angeles, Davis created a body of figurative paintings that explore a range of Black life. Believing he had a “responsibility to represent the people around me,” Davis drew on anonymous photography found in flea markets, personal archives, film and television, music, literature, art history and his imagination to create a ravishing body of work.  Figures dive into swimming pools, sleep, dance, and look at public art in settings that can be both realistic and dreamlike, joyful, and melancholic. Often enigmatic and uncanny, Davis’ paintings reveal a deep feeling for people, humanity, and the emotional textures of everyday life. 

'Motivated by the desire to “change the way people view art, the way they buy art, the way they make art,” Davis and his wife Karon co-founded The Underground Museum in 2012, a revered and loved institution in the historically Black and Latinx neighbourhood of Arlington Heights, Los Angeles.

'Organised chronologically, this retrospective presents Davis’ relentless curiosity beginning with his first exhibition in 2007, spanning 8 years until his untimely death in 2015. Featuring previously unseen paintings, works on paper, sculpture and his work at The Underground Museum, the exhibition pays special attention to the art historical, philosophical and conceptual approaches to his practice, revealing that collected images, humour, and above all, people were the core of his work.  Noah Davis is initiated by Barbican, London and DAS MINSK, Potsdam where it will be on display 7 September 2024 – 5 January 2025. The exhibition will tour to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles 8 June – 31 August 2025.

In January 2025, Indonesian artist Citra Sasmita will transform The Curve for her first solo exhibition in the UK. Working fluidly across the mediums of painting, sculptural installation, embroidery and scent, Sasmita will invite visitors on a symbolic, multi-sensory journey through the 90-metre-long gallery, exploring ideas of ancestral memory, ritual and migration. 

Sasmita’s practice often engages with the Indonesian Kamasan painting technique. Dating from the fifteenth century, and traditionally practiced exclusively by men, Kamasan was used to narrate Hindu epics. Reclaiming this masculine practice, Sasmita is interested in dismantling misconceptions of Balinese culture and confronting its violent colonial past. Challenging gender hierarchies and reinventing mythologies, her protagonists are powerful women who populate a post-patriarchal world. 

Citra Sasmita (b. 1990, Bali, Indonesia) is a self-taught artist; she studied literature and physics, then worked as a short story illustrator for the Bali Post before she began developing her expanded artistic practice. Major group exhibitions include the forthcoming Toronto Biennial of Art (Canada, 2024); After Rain, Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (Saudi Arabia, 2024); Ten Thousand Suns, 24th Biennale of Sydney (Australia, 2024); Choreographies of the Impossible, 35th São Paulo Biennale (Brazil, 2023); The Open World, 3rd Thailand Biennale, Mae Fah Luang Art and Cultural Park, Chiang Rai (Thailand, 2023); Garden of Ten Seasons, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (Germany, 2022); Kathmandu Triennale (Nepal, 2021-2022); ARTJOG MMXXII, Time To Wonder, Jogja National Museum, Yogyakarta (Indonesia, 2021); and the Biennale Yogyakarta (Indonesia, 2019). Solo shows include Atlas of Curiosity, Yeo Workshop (Singapore, 2023); Ode To The Sun, Yeo Workshop (Singapore, 2020); Tales of Nowhere, Museum MACAN, Jakarta (Indonesia, 2020); and Under The Skin, Redbase Foundation, Yogyakarta (Indonesia, 2018).

Shanay Jhaveri, Head of Visual Arts at the Barbican, said:

“We are delighted to share the first of our Visual Arts programme for 2025. From Noah Davis’s original and uncanny paintings in the Art Gallery to Citra Sasmita’s vibrant, multi-sensory installations in The Curve, these two exhibitions shine a light on artists who invoke the magical and the mythological to challenge hierarchies and reimagine the world around them.” 

Below: view to Barbican Cinemas on Beech Street, City of London