Barbican Conservatory: concrete jungle

Every summer, once a week, the Barbican opens a very special section to the garden-loving public. The Barbican Conservatory is London's second-largest greenhouse, next to Kew Gardens. Unlike the greenhouses in Kew Gardens, it's relatively small, split into several levels, and is in the heart of the city.

birthday at the Barbican

It was a warm, sunny Sunday, the day before my birthday, and my friend J had the perfect present: tickets to the Digital Revolution exhibit at the Barbican Centre.  

The Barbican Centre is a stunning modernist complex split into several levels, with a cafe, a library, an exhibition space and several theatres. A lot of the free space was given to the Digital Revolution exhibit, with video game spaces, shops, and kinetic installations that responded to touch like these motion-sensitive robots.

Minimaforms' installation Petting Zoo

they paved paradise, and put up...

...a paradise.

Brutalist architecture is called so for a reason. Distressed textures, the muddy colour of raw concrete and the stark lines of mid-20th-century* design exemplified this style. Many condemned it (and still do!) as ugly and intrusive.

love letter to London

In a previous post, wonder | wander | women talked about taking online art courses as a way to get through art block and gain new illustration skills. One of those courses asked students to pick a city we wanted to illustrate, and I - naturally - chose London.

Looking at St Paul's Cathedral and the London skyline
from the South Bank

open city | open heart

Living on the fringes of big cities as the wonder | wander | women do, we often get friends passing through. But after hitting the big tourist attractions, taking in a couple of shows, and having tea at the Savoy or drinks under the King Cole mural at the St Regis, our friends can tire of the crowds and famous sights. So we take them to places beloved by locals.

Image courtesy of Lola Abrera

Barbican Conservatory: hothouse flowers

Two weeks ago we posted about the overflowing life in the Barbican Conservatory. We touched on the cacti in the desert room, and some of the plants along the tropical paths. But there are so many species in the Conservatory that one post wasn't enough to count all our favourites!

The gumamela, Hibiscus rosa-sinensis, from our Conservatory post.

tropical birthday treat

Who doesn't love flowers for their birthday? This year wonder | wander | women celebrated my 43rd year by visiting one of my favourite urban gardens, the Barbican Conservatory. This isn't the first time I've spent my birthday here; maybe it can become a tradition.  

The Conservatory is a contradiction: concrete balconies, glass and steel, and tropical rainforest richness everywhere. It squeezed my heart to see the shiny, broad leaves of truly monstrous monstera or the colourful spines of bird-of-paradise blooming in profusion in the middle of this mid-century cement complex...like the parks and markets of old Manila.

Science Fiction classics at the Barbican Library

This week we have added more to our Into the Unknown post: the Barbican Library is having its own little exhibit of classic science fiction memorabilia!

Into the Unknown: Science Fiction at the Barbican Centre

From June 3 to September 1, our favourite retrofuturistic wonderland the Barbican Centre is holding a Science Fiction retrospective!

Into the Unknown explores the ability of science fiction to investigate 'the mysteries of what is still to be discovered, and the power of human ingenuity to unravel them."

quiet time, green spaces

One half of us is back in London, and the Wonder Wander Women are missing each other!

When we are in one place we always manage to find some quiet time to spend together, but once 'us time' is over and we go back to our daily routine it's sometimes hard to remember to give ourselves a little space.

Here are some of the places we visit for a little peace of mind.

summer at last!

While New Jersey & New York have been basking in the summer sunshine, London was dull and rainy.

The caryatids of St Pancras Church

Summer flowers like the delphinium bloomed bravely in the face of constant damp, wet winds and thunderstorms.

But this week temperatures soared and the city changed. A sunny weekend led to blazing sunshine over the next few days and Londoners were ready to make the most of it.

untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play at the Young Vic

One autumn day in the 90s wonder | wander | women visited the US for the first time and saw Miss Saigon  on Broadway. It was a magnificent, stirring romance, but left us feeling betrayed. The white lover saw his Asian marriage as less real than his American one. The Americans were viewed as saviours and Kim's own people as pimps and murderers. And why did Kim have to die so her son could live a better life? How could his life be better knowing his father and "new" mother didn't see him as part of their own future together?

untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play, poster (2023)
Courtesy of Young Vic

That is one of the questions asked by untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play, a time-warping, trope-skewering riot of a play written by Kimber Lee and directed by Roy Alexander Weise. It first appeared at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester for the Manchester International Festival in summer 2023, and migrated to London's Young Vic Theatre in the autumn.

magical manifestations

Tracing our trajectory through the years, wonder | wander | women have much to be grateful for and feel light years away from where we were when we first started this blog.

We have been to many wondrous places.

over the Philippines

pre-birthday reflections

Before we know it another year has passed and a milestone birthday looms. It's time to reflect over the past year and start building the new one. What will I bring to this next decade of my life?

sharing London, part 1

This month the wonder | wander | women have been unusually blessed with a steady stream of visitors! Our London contingent has had three different guests in as many weeks, and it's fun to go back to my first years here.

View of the Thames from the upper-floor cafe of the Tate Modern

More Than Human exhibition

Even as artificial intelligence dominates the news, it still mystifies the average person. Machine learning, big data, neural networks...how does it all fit into the workaday and interior life of humans? 

TeamLAB's What A Loving and Beautiful World

Baroque by the River: architecture around the Thames

London is famous for the history of its architecture, but the River Thames in particular is a treasure trove of buildings with stories. Walking around the river is wonder | wander | women's favourite way of connecting with this ancient and beautiful city.

light in august

Summer is in full swing over here in the Northern Hemisphere and wonder | wander | women are enjoying every sunny minute that we can. In London the heat waves come in between cooler grey days, so our brick houses don't overheat like previous summers.

Fountain at Southbank Centre

Events like ESEA Encounters at the Southbank Centre, Barbican's Outdoor Cinema and the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition get Londoners out of the house, a "staycation" away from the crowds of tourists visiting our parks and palaces.

Rainbow in the fountain

Londoners, like wonder | wander | women, are historically river people and love water. Although the city is away from the sea, the citizens love playing in the fountains and boating down the many canals and smaller rivers that run though town.

Houseboat mooring at Coal Drops Yard

The old industrial areas on the Regent's Canal around Kings Cross have been turned into a residential and commercial complex with shopping, restaurants, canalside apartments and outdoor events. 

Watching Frozen at the Everyman Cinema on the canal.

But on the canal itself, the historic boating community still thrives along the new developments. The Canal and River Trust operates guided tours through the area, and regular houseboat owners often come by, passing through the ingenious canal locks.

If you prefer a quieter weekend and a simple walk around the neighbourhood, the Sunday farmers' market at Chapel Market is a comfortable experience. Cheese, bread, pasta and fresh produce stock the tables of some of the friendliest people we've met, coming in to sell their wares in classic British style. 

And on days when not much is going on, we spend what time we can at the nearby parks and gardens. Summer is a brief but flamboyant time for British gardens, and we love seeing the peonies, roses, irises, and hydrangeas in rampant bloom everywhere.

Mini hydrangeas

Spring is the season most famous for flowers, but the intermittent cool rains of British summer time nourish a range of summer colours, as well as lots of flowers preferred by bees and other local pollinators. 

Pale peonies

This mix of fun, community, culture and convenience is what we love most about living in the city. It's also why summer is our favourite season. While we miss our home country and its beaches, for just a few months we can feel like our true selves in our adopted home.

Spring returns!

After the bitter weather of weeks past, wonder | wander | women were starting to wonder if spring was ever coming back. The week of snow definitely didn't help, although it was certainly pretty.