London

Centre of excellence? Londoners' views are split on the Barbican

David Farr: What I’d put on
The Barbican is London’s most European arts institution – proudly and defiantly bringing ‘great art’ to within its brutalist walls – and thank God for that. My only problem is that the act of going to the Barbican itself – particularly at weekends – is oddly joyless. So to change that, and purely in the spirit of mischief, I propose that for a year it doesn’t just host great cultural events but becomes the event itself. I also want to juxtapose the Barbican’s trademark urban minimalism with a twenty-first century eco-hippiness. It seems to me that the tension between these two aesthetics might be productive.

I propose a year-long ‘Barbican as installation’ season around climate change. For this, the Barbican will add solar panels to every fascia and roof (this would be the legacy) ensuring it becomes the first carbon-neutral cultural venue.

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I would commission a landscape architect to transform the lakeside into a postmodern arcadia within which companies such as Cornwall’s Kneehigh would be commissioned to produce scintillating outdoor theatre. I would also look to Carsten Holler to remake his Tate Alton Towers experience, but this time with his slides whooshing from the top of the Barbican’s residential blocks straight into the water.

Inside, the concert hall would be refitted with hay bales and be proud host to the urban arm of the Green Man Festival. In the urban version, modern folk of the likes of Spiro and the suicidal alt.country of Will Oldham would sit side by side with the minimalism of Steve Reich and digital Japanese composer Ryoji Ikeda. I’d like to hear Ikeda’s music with a piece of straw in my mouth.