page_title: Robin Hood Gardens
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Robin Hood Gardens / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: Robin Hood Gardens, Cotton Street The west side of the west block. Robin Hood Gardens is one of London's most notorious 1960s housing estates which is loathed by some but revered by others as a beacon of modern architecture. There are probably more people in the former camp than the latter. There are two blocks aligned roughly north-south with a patch of green space between them. They were designed by Alison and Peter Smithson in 1966-72, with Christopher Woodward and Ken Baker of the Greater London Council. The buildings embody the Smithsons' idea of "streets in the sky" and are an example of concrete Brutalism, with the pre-cast concrete being rough and shuttered. Pevsner comments that while being "impressively monumental" the scheme is also "inhumane" because of the high density, the narrowness of the decks and its proximity to busy roads on two sides. Tower Hamlets Council plan to demolish the buildings and redevelop the site. A campaign by the Twentieth Century Society and others to halt this by applying for listed building status in 2008 was unsuccessful.
context_page_description: Robin Hood Gardens is a residential estate in Poplar, London, designed in the late 1960s by architects Alison and Peter Smithson and completed in 1972. It was built as a council housing estate with homes spread across 'streets in the sky': social housing characterised by broad aerial walkways in long concrete blocks, much like the Park Hill estate in Sheffield; it was informed by, and a reaction against, Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation.
  The estate was built by the Greater London Council, but subsequently the London Borough of Tower Hamlets became the landlord.
  The scheme, the first major housing scheme built by the Smithsons, consisted of two blocks, one of 10 and one of seven storeys; it embodied ideas first published in their failed attempt to win the contract to build the Golden Lane Estate.
  A redevelopment scheme, known as Blackwall Reach, involves the demolition of Robin Hood Gardens as part of a wider local regeneration project that was approved in 2012. An attempt supported by a number of notable architects to head off redevelopment by securing listed status for the estate was rejected by the government in 2009. The demolition of the western block began in December 2017.
caption: The west side (outer side) of the west block
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