Blocks and Towers
The residential estate consists of 13 terrace blocks, grouped around a lake and green squares. The main buildings rise up to seven floors above a podium level, which links all the facilities in the Barbican, providing a pedestrian route above street level. Some maisonettes are built into the podium structure. There is no vehicular access within the estate, but there are some car parks at the periphery of the estate. Public car parks are located within the Barbican Centre.
The estate also contains three of London's tallest residential towers, at 42 storeys and 123 metres (404 ft) high. The top two or three floors of each block comprise three penthouse flats. The towers are (east to west):
- Cromwell Tower, completed in 1973 - named after Thomas Cromwell;
- Shakespeare Tower, completed in 1976 - named after William Shakespeare; and
- Lauderdale Tower, completed in 1974 - named after the Earl of Lauderdale.
Once the tallest residential towers in London, they were surpassed by the Pan Peninsula development near Canary Wharf.
Read more about this topic: Barbican Estate
Famous quotes containing the words blocks and/or towers:
“Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.—
Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies!—
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven be in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.”
—Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)