Night City (by Eve Garrard)

There I was, standing at a dark window on the sixth floor of one of the Barbican towers, looking out at the night sky. It glittered and coruscated with light, of course, because I was looking into the City of London, with its tall towers all lit up against the dark. To my left was the great rectangular southeast face of Moorhouse, and beside it the vertiginous quasi-cylindrical heights of the NatWest building, with the tall curve of the Gherkin shouldering in between them; then another series of high rectangles and curves glowing in front of me; and to my right the dark bulk of the Aldersgate Building ziggurat, alone among the towers in being entirely unlit, the huge sombre cubes of its silhouette slicing up into the night sky. It was an overwhelming spectacle, in its way as impressive as a great mountain range. But so powerful is the visual impact of the place, so dominant its architectural narrative – how can it fail to incline those who live and work in it to feel that all the really important things happen there? How hard it must be for them to remember how things are for people whose lives are played out in surroundings which entirely lack that drama and significance. (Eve Garrard)