Helen Barrett

Dec 14, 2024 | nytimes.com | Helen Barrett

The working-class city of Manchester has birthed legendary bands for decades. But in its quest for growth, its musical legacy is in danger of being muted. The Star & Garter pub in Manchester, England. The iconic music venue recently escaped the wrecking ball. Credit... Tom Jamieson for The New York Times Glass towers crowd the skyline in Manchester, encroaching a bit more each year on the legacy of this northern English city with a musical soul.

Oct 15, 2024 | telegraph.co.uk | Helen Barrett

Roksanda held its Spring/Summer 2025 show on Space House’s rooftop Credit: Jack Chipper “Stamped with an individual panache” was how, in 1970, the Architects’ Journal described the buildings of Richard Seifert & Partners, then one of London’s most successful architectural firms. Though it could not resist adding: “Like it or not.” Two years earlier – a year before the US moon landings –Space House opened in WC2, a Seifert-designed cylindrical office tower on Y-shaped pillars, looming over...

Oct 2, 2024 | telegraph.co.uk | Helen Barrett

‘Blade runner elevated the niche to a mass audience’: Harrison Ford in 1982’s Blade Runner Alamy It’s science-fiction set not in some galaxy far away but here on Earth, in a plausible, not-too-distant future. Society is in a state of upheaval: decay, unrest, violence, perhaps caused – or exacerbated by – technological advancement, venal authorities or malevolent corporations. And it is down to a lone insurgent – a “punk” – to fight back on behalf of humanity and sort out the mess. These...

Sep 13, 2024 | telegraph.co.uk | Helen Barrett

‘Sound reverberates around its great dome’: St Paul’s Cathedral Credit: Paul Grover At the end of a corridor at Aalto University in Finland, I heave open a heavy door, enter a room and find myself standing – then gently bouncing – on a flexible mesh floor, something like an enormous trampoline. I am suspended in the centre of a cavernous, blank cube: the sound is dead, there is as much space below me as there is above my head, and surrounding me are dozens of audio speakers, lined up and...

Sep 13, 2024 | yahoo.com | Helen Barrett

At the end of a corridor at Aalto University in Finland, I heave open a heavy door, enter a room and find myself standing – then gently bouncing – on a flexible mesh floor, something like an enormous trampoline. I am suspended in the centre of a cavernous, blank cube: the sound is dead, there is as much space below me as there is above my head, and surrounding me are dozens of audio speakers, lined up and pointing in my direction.