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.
Time capsule footage filmed by Jack Waller
