Timothy Brittain-Catlin, The Conversation
It was recently announced that Robin Hood Gardens -- a 1970s housing estate -- has not been listed for heritage protection by the UK government. This means that it is now, once again, threatened with demolition. The Twentieth Century Society, the national amenity society of which I am deputy chairman, has been in the vanguard of a long-running campaign to protect this building for posterity.
Robin Hood Gardens was designed by Alison and Peter Smithson for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, and completed in 1972. These buildings were not meant to be attractive: in a sense, that is the whole point of them. They are a statement of the Smithson's thinking on residential architecture -- a subject that had possessed them since they first designed an assertively "ugly" concrete house for a site in Soho.
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Among the Smithsons' students was Richard Rogers -- an architect best known for his work on the Centre Pompidou in Paris and, more recently, terminal four at Barajas Airport in Madrid. Rogers is thought to have developed his ideas for sharp and expressive building construction systems and layouts as a result of their teaching, and remains an active proponent of their work.
What's more, the development of architecture's high-tech movement -- one of Britain's most successful exports -- owes a great deal to the absurd ideas being fenced about by the crackpots at the Architectural Association when the Smithsons were in their pomp.
The post-war public housing schemes in the East End in general -- and the Borough of Tower Hamlets, in particular -- represent a fabulously rich assembly of experimental housing, which is, in most cases, pleasant and comfortable to live in.
Just to the north of Robin Hood Gardens lies Frederick Gibberd's Chrisp Street Market and the Lansbury Estate. This picturesque ensemble could represent the antithesis of the Smithson's Brutalism. And the unmissable architectural attraction of the immediate area is Ernö Goldfinger's Brownfield estate, which brought classically-inspired early 20th century French rationalism to unexpected landscapes and cultures.
Robin Hood Gardens represents more in civic or even national history than a freak piece of architecture. It is part of a story about what the public realm is, or could be, and how post-War British politics and governance deployed buildings to remake citizen's lives and horizons.1
- 1. Timothy Brittain-Catlin is a Reader in Architecture at the University of Kent, and a trustee and deputy chairman of the Twentieth Century Society. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer. CNN is showcasing the work of The Conversation, a collaboration between journalists and academics to provide news analysis and commentary. The content is produced solely by The Conversation.