The Barbican Time Capsule

Celebrating 40 years since the Barbican Centre opened

Construction of the Arts Centre (1976)Barbican Centre

Laying the Barbican's foundations

The contract for the Barbican’s engineering went to the Ove Arup company.

Photograph of Construction of the Barbican CentreBarbican Centre

One of the engineers who worked on the site, Jack Waller, was a keen amateur filmmaker, and recorded home video of the early stages of the build. His daughter was kind enough to donate it to our Archive. You can see clips from this footage below.

The Barbican Centre (1980-02-27/1980-02-27) by Peter BloomfieldBarbican Centre

The Barbican Time Capsule

As well as the mixture of bomb damage and building-site, the footage shows the the colourful costumes of the Lord Mayor’s Show and the placing of a time capsule in the foundations.

For our birthday, we created a digital time capsule to celebrate 40 years and give a nod to the first time capsule.

Credits: Story

Time capsule footage filmed by Jack Waller

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
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