Building completed

April 1971. Willoughby House was part of Phase III of the City’s building programme for the Barbican site. The contractor was John Laing Construction Limited.

Location

Willoughby House is a terrace block which forms the eastern edge of the Barbican Estate. It runs from Speed House in the north to Andrewes House in the south. It has views over Speed Garden and the lake but it is set back somewhat from them, and looks at them over Brandon Mews. At the back, Willoughby House overlooks Britannic Tower. At the front, it overlooks the lake past the plastic domes of the Brandon Mews houses.

Orientation

Like all terraces running north to south, there is a central internal corridor running down the middle of the building on each floor. In all the other north to south blocks, flats are on one side of the corridor or the other, and all their windows face either east or west. But the Barbican designers thought that the view over Moor Lane was not nice enough for living rooms. So the majority of the accommodation is planned on what they call the ”Scissors” or ”Up and Over” principle. In other words, you go “up” to your living area and then “over” (the corridor) to your bedroom area. (Alternatively you go down and under). The result is that all the living rooms of maisonettes look west over the lake and all the bedrooms face east over Moor Lane. The complexity of squeezing the typical east-west flat arrangement into a north-south building meant that flats are rarely the same.

Accomodation

Willoughby House contains 148 flats and maisonettes. There are 6 storeys of flats with penthouse maisonettes above. The flats are numbered 101 – 124, 201 – 204, 301 – 344, 401 – 404, 501 – 544, 601 – 604, 701 – 724.