The Barbican is a Grade-II listed Arts Centre and residential Estate in the City of London.

Begun in 1962 and completed in 1982, it is now a global icon of Brutalist architecture.

Our Archive tells the story of the Barbican through our collection of architectural plans, photographs, graphic design, drawings, programming ephemera and objects.

Our partnership with Google Arts and Culture has involved digitising over 3,500 images of objects and documents from our Archive, 

and creating 60 stories bringing them to life.

The stories covered include the origins of the Barbican’s design, what has happened in the buildings and how they got built.

Two important parts of the Archive collection are the original plans for the Barbican

and records showing the Barbican's first visual identity .

Along with later reimaginings of the Barbican, with new signs, new logos and new ideas about what should happen here.

We have also digitised items which show the early history of the Barbican Estate .

If you would like to get in touch about the collection, you can email us at archives@barbican.org.uk