Peter Duckworth continues his series with show home number 3: Type 85 Speed House
In the last couple of editions of Barbican Life we introduced Miriam Howitt, the architect behind the interior design of the original Barbican Show Homes, and we took a tour of her Type 20 and 21 interiors. Amongst the very first female architects in the UK, Miriam is now 95 years old, and she remembers her Barbican work well. Miriam created the show homes in 1968 for the launch of Barbican in 1969.
Show home number 3: Type 85 Speed House
The first show home we looked at, a Type 21, was designed for an imaginary young couple, on a low budget; whereas the Type 20 was for an older family and to a higher spec, based largely on some fabulous modernist furniture. One again, Miriam imagined the family who would be living here. In this instance she planned an apartment “furnished for a merchant banker and his wife who frequently play host to their international friends and business colleagues”. This show home was on the westernmost side of Speed House, probably on the fifth floor. Figure 1 shows her original plans for the interior of the apartment and figure 2 is a reproduction of the City of London pamphlet which gave prospective residents comprehensive details of Miriam’s interior choices. It is interesting that, even in this high-end home, the television is still rented from Granada TV. It was a strange habit of the 1960s, and well into the 1970s, that TVs were often rented rather than purchased. At this time, TVs were a high-priced, rapidly evolving technology, and people preferred this approach which enabled them to update their rental model every couple of years.
Figure 1Miriam Howitt’s drawings of Show home 3
Figure 2 CoL leaflet re Show Home 3 detailing
The Reception/Study
Type 85 apartments feature an interesting design with an open-plan room directly off the small hallway and corridor. On the original Barbican estate plans this room is called a reception/study, though on Miriam’s plan she renames it a study-loggia. A loggia is an architectural term used to describe a room, typically on the first floor of an Italian renaissance Villa, which is integrated into the structure of the house and exposed along one wall to the outside: a transitional space between outside and in. The fact that Miriam used this term shows how successfully the wall of glass brings the outside in.
Figure 3. Study/reception. Source: Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Collections
Figure 3 shows how Miriam has used this space to create a semi-formal office and sitting area, with an ambience of considered calm. She uses a sheet curtain to give some privacy to the office area whilst keeping it very open. The formal sitting area is composed of Tetrad modular chairs of a modernist design, sited in a U-shape. Tetrad, now an established manufacturer of very traditional seating, was established in Lancashire in 1968, the year Miriam designed the apartment. Clearly, when they began, Tetrad were offering a very modern range of seating. The colourway of this room is all tans and browns, predicting the 1970’s obsession with such interior colours. With the decanter of whisky sitting on the coffee table and the brown interior it looks a little like a set from Mad Men!
Lounge
The lounge presents as a rather formal space with individual Heal’s Danish-designed rosewood and leather chairs sat around a coffee table from the same range. The key feature in this room, as seen in figure 4, is the System Cado rosewood wall panelling and shelving system which stretches the full height of the room and along most of the wall length. System Cado was a very high-end storage solution designed by Poul Cadovius, the Danish designer, in 1960. The cabinets are exquisitely made and command a high price to this day. The carpet and curtains are various tones of exactly the same blue, which is an interesting approach not often seen today. The rich, dark woods of the wall panelling, the chairs, and the window frames give the room a sumptuous warmth, despite its apparent formality. Miriam recounts that her personal assistant so loved the System Cado in the finished apartment that she bought her a number of pieces from the range for her Christmas present that same year.
Interestingly, dark wood panelling has been seen on contemporary Barbican interiors, an example is shown in figure 5: the designers of this apartment state on their website that they took inspiration from photos of original Barbican interiors.
Figure 4. Lounge. Source: Miriam Howitt
Figure 5: A 2024 Barbican interior featuring dark wood wall panelling (Source: Black & Milk interior design studio)
Dining Area
Figure 6 (Source: Historic England Archive. John Laing Photographic Collection)
The dining area continues the dark rosewood theme which, as evidenced in the lounge, ensures that the rooms work well alongside the dark woods of the distinctive Barbican balcony door and window frames. In this instance, a Heals Catena dining suite, looking both classic and modernist, is the perfect dining room furniture for the style of apartment Miriam was creating. The cutlery is a thing of beauty: the outstanding Alveston range, designed in 1961 by Robert Welch, and considered such a distinctive, almost sculptural, design that a set belongs in the V&A collection.
Bedroom One
Figure 7 Bedroom 1 (Source: Historic England Archive. John Laing Photographic Collection)
The principal bedroom is next to the lounge and extends the blue carpet from there. But aside from the tasteful Heals System 21 dressing table and the draped privacy sheer at the window, the key feature of the room, shown in figure 8, is the very vibrant bright blues of the Edinburgh Weavers Saturn curtain fabric.
Figure 8. Curtain in bedroom one (Source: Miriam Howitt)
When these were closed it would have been quite something. This is a theme in both bedrooms, although in bedroom 2 it is taken to a further extreme…
Bedroom Two
In the guest bedroom, Miriam turns bedroom one on its head and finds an unusual solution to the challenge of a bedroom with a large expanse of glazing. In this room, she has permanently closed the curtains, providing a backdrop to the bedhead. Miriam remembers that she left two slits of glazing along this wall to ensure adequate lighting in the room.
Figure 9: Bedroom 2. (Source: Historic England Archive. John Laing Photographic Collection)
Figure 10 shows one side of the room in colour, from one of the photos Miriam took after completing the project. Figures 9 and 10 show that the curtain fabric was carried through into the choice of material for the bed.
The use of very patterned curtain fabrics in both bedrooms (and in the office) foresaw the trend for the bright, bold, colourful patterns which characterised interiors of the 1970s. But unlike much of the modernist, Scandinavian style Miriam employed throughout the rest of the show homes, which continue to be popular today, these bold fabric patterns have remained rooted to their era and look somewhat dated to a 2025 eye.
Figure 10 (Source: Miriam Howitt)
Of interest, is the bedroom furniture in this room. It is from the British company Uniflex, who were at the forefront of modernist furniture trends of post-war Britain, employing the talents of eminent modernist designers such as Gunther Hoffstead and Peter Hayward. Usually famous for their handleless, quality wooden furniture, the DH range in bedroom two is an unusual and striking design.
Show home 3 saw Miriam working to a higher budget, and the office and lounge reflect a calm and sophisticated, if a little formal, look, which Miriam states is what she imagined a merchant banker would choose. Meanwhile, the bedrooms are a riot of pattern and colour showing a flamboyancy not seen in the first two show homes. These two rooms definitely feel more dated than her other work at the Barbican.
Over these first three articles in Barbican Life, each of the initial three official show homes, which the City of London prepared for the launch of the Barbican, has been examined in depth. There were two additional show homes worked on by Miriam, for which there is little information. In the final instalment of this series, in the next issue, we will look at these final two apartments, one in Andrewes House and one in Gilbert House.
