Barbican Centre announces competition to design new furniture for its campus

As London’s Barbican Centre makes progress on a comprehensive renovation to its Brutalist building, the museum has announced a competition for new furniture designs that complement the architecture. 

The competition coincides with the museum’s major overhaul, an effort being overseen by Allies and Morrison and Asif Khan Studio with Buro Happold and Harris Bugg Studio, ahead of its 50th anniversary in 2032. The design team is taking a retrofit-first approach in an effort to reduce carbon and protect the Barbican’s original fabric. Upgrades include, new mechanical systems, improved glazing and doors, new LED lighting, rainwater harvesting, and the reuse of materials such as glass and terrace pavers—and now furniture, too.

In a statement about the furniture design competition, Alex Watt, architect at Asif Khan Studio, said: “The Barbican’s foyers are some of the most important spaces in the building. They are places where audiences arrive, orient themselves and begin their experience of the Centre. We’re looking to enhance these spaces while celebrating the character and ambition of the original architecture, and this furniture commission is an exciting opportunity to extend that thinking. We want to find pieces that respond to the Barbican’s unique identity while supporting the many different ways people gather, move through and spend time in the building.”

The commission would employ and engage a designer from the end of 2026 through  2029. During this time the designer, or design firm, would be responsible for a “furniture strategy” and a “bespoke range” of up to 500 pieces, including armchairs, sofas, coffee tables, bar stools, benches with umbrellas, and event chairs. The museum noted that it reuse remains a priority and that the designers will work with the museum to identify existing pieces to keep in circulation and to specify ready-made designs. 

In a press release the museum said, the furniture should promote “accessibility, flexibility and sustainability…while responding to the artistic and architectural context of the Barbican.”

In a number of museum settings bespoke furniture has been commissioned to complement the architecture, or even to function as pieces of art. In the Louis Kahn–designed Yale Center for British Art, architect and interior designer Benjamin Baldwin furnished the building with pieces that included a set of lounge chairs he designed with industrial designer Don Chadwick. In a more recent example, MILLIØNS designed a cafe at the I. M. Pei–designed Everson Museum of Art with bespoke shelving inspired by glass vitrines and outdoor planters influenced by the building’s architecture. 

Those interested in trying their hand at designing a Barbican-inspired chair or table have through August 28 to submit. The Barbican anticipates it will announce a shortlist in September, with the winner named in November. 

When the Barbican Centre opened in 1982, Robin Day held the role of furniture designer. Among the range of furnishings Day designed, were a set of modular outdoor seating made of air-moulded polypropylene from Magis. In the museum’s auditorium Day cooked up a rainbow of colors for the rows of seating. Seat numbers were dutifully etched into the armrests of each chair.

Beyond these, Day designed seating for a concert hall and three cinemas, cafe tables and chairs, and long snaking sofas for the foyers.

Similarly, the latest commission looks to fill all the nooks and crannies of the multiuse art building, including its Sculpture Court, Lakeside terrace, classrooms, and the foyers that Allies and Morrison and Asif Khan Studio are designing.