Meet the landscape studio reviving the eco-brutalist Barbican Conservatory

Earlier in 2025, the Barbican Centre shared proposals for its extensive upcoming renewal project. Addressing not only the deteriorating structures and systems of the centre’s original construction – built between 1965 and 1982 – the brutalist architecture icon’s revamp will consider contemporary issues of accessibility and sustainability, bringing its remit as an arts venue up to date, and leaving it future-proofed and open to all. Among the public spaces due to be refurbished are the building’s foyers and lakeside terrace, but also – and most excitingly for some – its much-revered eco-brutalist conservatory.

In 2022, architects Allies & Morrison, along with Asif Khan Studio, were appointed to lead the rejuvenation’s overall design, working with environmental engineers Buro Happold. For the Barbican Conservatory, however – an oasis of leafy, tropical planting in the heart of the City – Allies & Morrison enlisted the help of Harris Bugg Studio, an award-winning landscape design practice of growing renown. With the design team’s plans for the conservatory now being submitted for planning, we spoke with Harris Bugg Studio co-founder Charlotte Harris about the esteemed yet challenging task of revamping such a beloved indoor landscape.

Harris Bugg Studio on the Barbican, urban green and creative disagreement

‘It’s the dream project,’ says Harris, with palpable excitement. ‘It’s the monumentality and the cinematic nature of the space; the scale of the building, its proportion, and the drama. This is a vital green space in the City of London, and that’s what we’re passionate about.'

Having ‘professionally dated’ for a few years, as she puts it, assisting each other on numerous landscape projects, designers Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg formally partnered in 2017, and have since made a name as a progressive, environment-led practice, working on prestigious spaces including RHS Garden Bridgewater and Gothenburg Botanic Garden, and winning multiple Chelsea Flower Show ‘gold’ awards.

Their 2023 Chelsea show garden, designed for spinal injury charity Horatio’s Garden – later relocated permanently to the Princess Royal Spinal Cord Injuries Centre in Sheffield – won that year’s ‘Best in Show’ (see the Instagram post, above). In many ways, it distils the ethos of their joint practice: site-specific storytelling, prioritised accessibility, immersive planting, reclaimed materials and authentic craftsmanship. 'We spent nine months having conversations with patients and nursing staff before we started designing the garden,' Harris says. 'We thought a lot about how you bring elements of Sheffield into quite a challenging NHS setting where people are there dealing with an often sudden, life-changing injury.'

During the design process, Harris and Bugg were walking in the nearby Peak District and were inspired by cairns of stone in the landscape. 'They felt like such a metaphor for Horatio’s Garden, as markers of an unclear path – the suggestion that someone has been here before and a path, though unclear, has guidance.'

The studio subsequently engaged a pair of local, fifth-generation dry-stone wallers, who crafted beautiful, stylised stone cairns for the garden. In addition, Harris and Bugg conceived permeable terrazzo pathways designed to be wholly smooth for wheelchair users, constructed with cement-free concrete, recycled brick and waste materials in an effort to reduce carbon footprint. The planting, meanwhile, is both lush and tranquil, comprising airy birch and maple trees, sulphurous euphorbias and the soothing blues and mauves of iris, thalictrum and ‘mutabilis’ roses.

The studio’s many other projects – which include residential, botanical and commercial commissions, as well as work for charity-based clients – similarly demonstrate the highly considered, environmentally conscious principles that brought Harris and Bugg together. 'We have a very warm, close relationship despite coming from very different backgrounds,' Harris reflects of the joining of their two practices: 'He lives and grew up in rural Devon; I live in urban Stratford, east London, but we share values around respectful dialogue with the land and the balancing of beauty with accountability, questioning extractive process, questioning which materials can be reused from a site and how.'

Creative disagreement is also a fundamental to their studio ethos, Harris explains. 'We feel comfortable giving upfront feedback to one another, and that’s a really rich, enjoyable, creative experience. Differences of opinion allow questioning, and it’s in the rigour of that that I think the work becomes much higher quality.' With their team now grown to 15, Harris Bugg is split across three offices in London, Devon, and Scotland.

Working on the exciting redevelopment of the Barbican’s Conservatory, Harris Bugg Studio has the opportunity to exercise each of these principles. 'It’s a really specialist space: it’s not a botanic garden but a much-loved, eco-brutalist green space in the city, and its dialogue with the architecture is essential,' says Harris. 'Working with the conservatory’s head gardener, Marta Lowcewicz, has been crucial to the process; she is the lynchpin of the garden and her knowledge of it is unparalleled.'

Early in the design process, the studio assembled a team of consulting experts, including botanical consultant Phil Griffiths (who has worked on glasshouse projects at Kew Gardens and London’s Sky Garden), Christopher Young (Garden Manager at RHS Wisley) and Matt Pottage, who is head of horticulture and landscape strategy at the Royal Parks. 'We also worked with modernist landscape historian Karen Fitzsimon and project heritage consultants Alan Baxter Associated, as the original conservatory planting archives are limited. We wanted to be thorough and rigorous in thinking about how the new planting will be grounded in the dialogue with the conservatory’s brutalist architecture.'

In addition to consultations with architectural heritage bodies, including The Twentieth Century Society, the Design Council and English Heritage, Harris also talks of visiting and taking inspiration from the brutalist glasshouse at Denver Botanic Gardens in Colorado, and the tropical planting at Great Dixter in East Sussex. 'It’s about celebrating big textures, bold contrasts and something that is cinematic, theatrical and epic.'

Naturally, after four and a half decades, there are significant issues of deterioration to address within the site. 'It’s a huge piece of work for the whole team,' Harris explains. 'It’s a listed building, so Allies & Morrison and Buro Happold are taking exceptional care in how they ensure the new glazing, heating and ventilation systems are designed to both preserve the iconic building’s original architectural vision and be fit for purpose. In terms of our work on the planting design, we’re creating two different spaces for dry and tropical planting typologies, and really turning up the dial of those eco-brutalist principles: how the landscape frames and enhances the architecture and vice versa.'

Harris describes how some of the original plants – large weeping figs and monsteras – have rooted into the building’s flytower structure itself, making some of the walkways hazardous and impassable. Furthermore, she tells me, the conservatory has historically served as an event space as well as a place for plants, with the shared temperature and climate controls compromising both. 'Allies & Morrison have designed a contained events area within the conservatory, thermally suited for people to feel comfortable, meaning that the climatic settings for the [rest of the] conservatory will be focused on horticultural requirements.'

The studio’s ethos of reuse will also come into play. Having conducted a survey of the condition, size and health of the existing plants, they’ve assessed which might be reused or propagated from. Working with Allies & Morrison, the hope is that the conservatory’s brown floor tiles – many of which are cracked and broken and which must be lifted during the works – will be crushed for reuse as a planting medium for the arid, sand-loving plants, referencing the building’s history. 'As much as anything else, our work is about storytelling, so when we design, we try to speak to the history and the humanity of a place: design is about custodianship, and as a practice, we’re committed to how we strive to be better custodians.'

Perhaps one of the most exciting dimensions of the revitalisation of the conservatory is in continuing its legacy as a cultural space. When it reopens, it will welcome visitors for much more of the week, and, previously considered only 30 per cent accessible, it will become somewhere for everyone to enjoy. 'What’s particularly special about the conservatory is that it is a green space and a bridge to plants in the heart of the City of London. Many are recognisable houseplants; for those without a garden but with much-loved indoor plants, it represents the home for houseplants in London.'

Asked how she feels about undertaking a project of such prestige, Harris takes a measured view: 'We feel a huge responsibility to get it right, and committing to do our absolute best – in the rigour, respect and the care around it – is what’s at the heart of a project like this.'

Pending planning approval, the Barbican Conservatory will be closed for reconstruction in 2027