![\"Barbican](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\/35929eb6-aad5-42fa-9c55-0751fbdb73d9.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Barbican Centre, London\u2019s modernist masterpiece, is famously complex. One frustrated visitor on Tripadvisor described it as \u201cthe most bewildering building ever\u201d while another asked \u201cwho dreamt this one up\u201d?<\/p>\n
It is not just tourists. Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the record-breaking explorer whose conquests include climbing Everest, once got lost on his way to his own show. Barbican staff mythology has the explorer finally making his way into the complex by scaling a wall. <\/p>\n
It may be little consolation to any baffled visitors, or explorers, but complexity has been part of the Barbican\u2019s self-identity from the beginning. Even before it opened, adverts for the London Symphony Orchestra\u2019s concerts said: \u201cIf the LSO can find the Barbican Centre by the time it opens in March, they\u2019ll be performing there nightly.\u201d And if you do make it, you can treat yourself to a \u201cI found the Barbican Centre\u201d pin in the shop.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But as part of the Barbican Renewal, a major project that will restore and modernise the centre over the coming years, a team of architects and designers has been tasked with drawing up a wayfinding scheme to help ensure no one misses the start of a concert again. <\/p>\n
The team will be led by Assemble, a London-based architecture company, and the Parisian design company Designers Unit in collaboration with Tactile Studio. Giles Smith, the founding partner at Assemble, said: \u201cThe Barbican\u2019s complexity is both something that is part of the character but also a problem that needs to be resolved.\u201d <\/p>\n
This is not the first attempt to make it easier to navigate the Barbican. You can still see yellow lines on the raised walkways, which were put in place in the 1970s to help people navigate the estate. The last major attempt to improve the signage was in 2006, but changing social and aesthetic standards and some physical changes to the building itself have made a new overhaul necessary, along with improving notoriously poor accessibility for disabled guests.<\/p>\n
It is easy to see why the Barbican can be a difficult place to find your way around. \u201cThere are 40 different entrances,\u201d Jaymi Sudra, an architect at Assemble, said. \u201cSo entering the Barbican can be incredibly disorienting.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\/2868dd9a-e67b-4fdb-bf05-23b9e1a7eef4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Emmanuel Labard, Jaymi Sudra, David Lebreton and Giles Smith<\/p>\n
JOHN KELLY\/BARBICAN CENTRE<\/p>\n
Those 40 entrances are also split over many different levels. There are 18 points of access to the centre on the ground floor, according to Assemble, and the remaining 22 are spread across the basement and up to the third floor. <\/p>\n
The Barbican was built at a time when planners expected pedestrian traffic to go across elevated walkways while cars would drive along the streets. This vision of the city never came into being, leaving the Barbican\u2019s walkways stretching off seemingly randomly into the surrounding streets. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Inside the \u00a3191m Barbican rebuild to restore a brutalist landmark<\/a><\/p>\n The centre itself sits in the middle of a residential estate. Some parts of the estate are for residents only, while others are accessible to the public but it can be difficult to work out which is which. Many people who have walked through the Barbican will have asked themselves: \u201cAm I meant to be here?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe difficulty is that there\u2019s so much stylistic continuity between the residential areas and the social centre. The wayfinding needs to clarify where you\u2019re meant to be,\u201d Smith said. <\/p>\n Even once you\u2019ve made it to the centre, all of the different levels can still pose problems for unwary visitors. Mo Gilbert, who has worked at the centre for 40 years, has seen plenty of people getting lost in her time there. \u201cWe\u2019ve had people finding their way onto the stage just as the orchestra was going on. People appearing in tunnels that they\u2019re not meant to be in. Years ago someone said their car had been stolen only for it to be found in a different car park,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n So how will the team actually go about making it easy to navigate London\u2019s most complex building? <\/p>\n \u201cWe have to be in the footsteps of the user,\u201d David Lebreton, the director of Designers Unit, said. \u201cThe first approach to wayfinding is to look at the entrances and vertical circulations, and then determine the major flows through the building.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Early](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\/82a7f956-3853-419a-bbf2-c522dce26ed6.jpg\")
<\/p>\n