-- the architect Piers Gough is not alone in seeing a "smouldering, craggy, deeply dramatic" quality in the buildings -- but most observers are far less generous in their assessment, finding the concrete blocks inelegant, demeaning, sad. Whatever its visual appeal today, the Barbican was a landmark project when it was conceived in the 1950s. A new book on the estate's architects, Chamberlin, Powell & Bon, shows the extent to which it was fired by idealism and noble intentions. Elain Harwood, the book's author, describes how the architects were infected with the postwar enthusiasm to "build a better Britain, with greater opportunities for ordinary people than ever before". It was the same hopefulness and belief in cultural democracy that led to the foundation of the Edinburgh festival, the formation of the BBC's Third programme, the Festival of Britain. The three men were uncowed by the magnitude of their project. They were working on an intimidatingly blank canvas. "There is no strong and comforting discipline of style to work within, as was enjoyed by the classical, medieval or renaissance architects," wrote Chamberlin, before anticipating -- and rejecting -- the post-modernist era that was to follow. They were pioneers of what is today called master planning: the design of urban spaces that took account of social context and multiplicity of uses. At the Barbican, and the adjoining Golden Lane estate, they put their ideas into practice. At Golden Lane, the pile of rubble that was the consequence of three hours of bombing