Robin Hood Gardens: Requiem For A Dream
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- Опубліковано 9 лис 2014
- After decades of controversy, Alison and Peter Smithson’s monumental housing estate in Poplar, East London, is finally being emptied of tenants in preparation for its demolition. The blocks will eventually be replaced by a quiver of anodyne towers designed by AEDAS. The AR’s History Editor Tom Wilkinson takes a final look at this landmark of Brutalism, tracing the context of its creation, the vagaries of its reputation, and exploring the unloved, but not unlovely spaces around it, concluding that Robin Hood Gardens is a reminder of architecture’s potential in an age of austerity.
CREDITS
Architects: Alison and Peter Smithson
Writer and presenter: Tom Wilkinson
Director: James English
Sound: Isabel Wilkinson
Voiceover production: Simon Charles
Editing: James English and Phineas Harper
Series Director: Phineas Harper
Music: 'Circle of Sleep' by Isnaj Dui
Special thanks: Jose Estevez
ALL COMING DOWN,HAD SOME GREAT TIMES ON THIS ESTATE,EVEN THOUGH I DID NOT LIVE THERE,THAT PARTY BACK IN 87...CLASSIC
We went to look around RHGs a year or so before the ethnic cleansing began. We didn’t go in the building itself. I found it to be a quiet place punctuated with the sound of those heavy security doors closing from time to time. There wasn’t anything particularly bad about the place, it was just a place, and the gardens within the centre were a welcome sanctuary from the surroundings. The thing i particularly liked about RHGs is the way that the building was a series of decoupled stacked cubes that snaked along the side of the site. Most negative views of this type of architecture focus on the way it looks but if the spaces work for the inhabitants then that is the most important thing which judging by the narration that is the case here.
Thats my old home of 30 beautiful years and great memories. Sad to see it come down...
Hi, I’m a second year architecture student currently doing research on Robin Hood Gardens, its legacy and memory. I was wondering if I could contact you and ask you a few question that would really inform and bring to light your experiences living there.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
@@lemuelaarongonzales1266 Hi yes ofcourse! I can be contacted my email or phone whichever is easier for you
Hi @@lemuelaarongonzales1266 would love to get in touch about your research/essay. I'm an artist reflecting on this whole story.
I'd love a chat at some point too if that's ok? I'm an artist looking at this project as a whole and interested in the residents opinions.
@@vanessafarinha hiya that be nice. If you provide your contact details I can get in touch
Would have been good to replace with a new council housing block ,with input from residents.
One problem with brutalism is that wet concrete changes its appearance. So in England the facade constantly displays the water running down it, and it just makes it look wet and grubby.
Great video. I think by the end of the decade many cities in the UK will be covered in charmless high rise blocks with bright coloured panels stuck all over them. I will be very sorry to see the passing of this estate and in sure future generations see it as a crass decision.
and i'll wager they don't last as long as the buildings they replaced.
went there today and it was absolutly squalid, human faeces everywhere but mainly in the building already emptied. Very eerie place
The Smithsons are fascinating. Their visions were loved by the architects, but in reality, their uncompromising designs and sheer scale rendered them inhuman and intimidating. I love their work for its sheer audacity, but I have never lived in these kinds of estates, if I had, I would probably have a different opinion entirely.
spectacular upload The Architectural Review. I crushed the thumbs up on your video. Continue to keep up the exceptional work.
Had my final design project of my BA(Hons) Architecture on Robin Hood gardens. I'm really sad to hear the bad news and even more disappointed about the future faith of social housing... No matter the 'irregular' social behaviour, the building served ideals that perhaps anywhere but across the A1261 & Canary Wharf, could have probably been preserved.
+Nick Stagkos get involved in the new efforts to list the building - it is not dead yet. www.dezeen.com/2015/03/17/robin-hood-gardens-peter-alison-smithson-campaign-save-demolition-twentieth-century-society/
I'm currently an architecture student studying it, it would be great if I can discuss it with you, would you mind?
If not, what's ur insta?
Maisonettes this huge, with so much green space, and this close to City Centre, and for the poor?... There was simply NFW the banksters were going to let this complex become "listed" and remain standing. Note the plans for its replacement--Blackwall Reach--is *over 7 times the density* of RHG!
Great to see the AR branching out into film - a good way to engage the public more perhaps? Given the right exposure on social media that is. I would suggest though that it might be wise to steer away from the melancholic Meades tone; architecture is after all an optimistic profession!
Tragic that this Iconic Housing Block wasn't rehabilitated.
Excellent video.
Anyone who has lived in a conversion would be happy to move into a concrete purpose built like this, much less noise pollution. Those surveys against brutalism sounds very targetted. Also what a huge waste of public money demolishing them, it's a disgrace, and as the tenants say they only need refurbishing or restoring and they would be wonderful.
lmfao wtf? anyone who has lived in a tenement would be happy to operate the first demolition machine on this ghetto heap of roaches!
i grew up in a council house it was a conversion not a shit hole estate i loved my conversion but i can not live on a council estate
excellent video
Your style is beautifully reminiscent of Jonathan Meades.
I worked in Tower Hamlets in Social Housing for 26 years. The only good thing about this block is that the flats are massive, that's it nothing else. What should happen is that it should be replaced with social housing with the input of the local people in designing the replacement housing. But no it will be private unaffordable flats which will probably be bought as buy to let or just for investment purposes. A load of empty flats. Disgusting
Denise G- Hill to be fair, what do low income folks know about architecture.
Buildings should last longer than a generation and be connected to the ground as ecosystem.
The cost to refurbish structures like this is huge and most of the money doesn’t go into the buildings it goes to the contractors.
Does anyone know if the site is accessible? I wanted to go and take pictures for my essay.
Do you also know when the demolition will start?
It’s still there, the east side of it
I think the architects of these monstrosities should have to live in them for a couple years. See how they like it.
Did not see any of the Intellectual bourgeoisie waiting in line to live in this brutal ugly mess as the pontificated about it from their rural retreats.
As with most public services the issue is not that they exist, its that they're funding is gutted.
I think a well-designed apartment tower is much better than these rectangular blocks. I saw them a lot in Europe (the blocks), built in the 70s, and they just look awful over time.
hi, can someone write me the name of the person saying "...brutalism was above all creating images". I can't understand it! thank you
+dottydot85 claims it was reyner banham, but it does not really fit, id need to find the exact reference in banham's book on Brutalism. Banham had said modern glass boxes creates images, not Brutalism, as far as I can tell, the movie got it wrong ...
+RCarsen It's in Banham's book.
+Tom Wilkinson Do you know which one, or perhaps even the exact CITE? i'm also looking to validate this quote
obviousliy its his "New Brutalism" of 70s
Similarly, Pruitt-Igoe was demolished, and for similarly good reasons.
Until recently I lived within 5 minutes walk of Robin Hood Gardens and did so for 15 years. Robin Hood Gardens is a monstrosity. As a place to live in it monumentally failed, and that is the only metric by which housing should be judged. It's interesting that the campaign to save this horrible place came from the architecture world and fans of the Smithsons, and not from the poor people who had to live in it.
Gud review m9y
Oh yes, some people would, and do, shit on their own doorsteps, and worse. More than a few people just aren’t socialised, and a miserable monstrosity like these flats is not going to change them.
If architects liked it so much, how come none of them lived there?
They wanted to keep it, but they wanted the poor to live in it.
Humans don't want to live on top of each other.
They all lived in Georgian houses in Regent's Park.
Poor lived there but we were rich full of life and community spirit ❤️... They dont make buildings like these anymore
It's a failed experiment. The building is Fugly! Once you see what's been proposed for the site, then you realise "ummm yer, this fugly needs to be demolished asap". The towers shown @ 7:50 is NOT what's actually proposed
Brutalism is beautiful.
Yeah the architects are just trying their best to protect themselves. The new buildings are not much bigger and much more practical with more spacing.
A lot of the brutalist architecture, especially the likes of Thamesmead and Cumbernauld would be fine if simply maintained properly... cleaned and repainted regularly, fixtures and fittings updated every decade in line with currennt trends and standards, and faults with central systems like water and heating fixed before they become an issue.
The issues we face in brutalist municipalities and estates aren't the fault of their creator, but their lack of proper cleaning and maintenance by their owner.
A lot of it was poorly built and made of poor materials. It was never going to last.
I live here lol
In response to dottydot85, I think the theorist is trying to explain brutalism as something that triggers the imagination. As opposed to a kind of 'popular' (I don't believe it is popular) conception that a piece of concrete is just a piece of concrete, hard, course and unimaginative. Sorry don't know who said it.
It looks like a prison.
show me a regular modern family home that looks better
Ghettos are where an entire socioeconomic demographic are plunked together & marginalized from the rest ... whether a ghetto for the rich, or poor or middle class ... the result is *banality* ... in all my travels, it’s those cities which offer the most dynamic mix of rich-poor spectrum all together that offer the best traditional solutions. One can look at this and completely reimagine with mixing up the menu to offer a diversity of housing choices, and mixed use programming of occupancy (ie. add ground floor shops / retail + offices/ community services + incl. penthouse flats with higher income earners)
Stop the segregation in society. Mix it up 🌈.
Sad to hear it his going. Robin Hood gardens should have been preserved.
Not funding then destroying public housing to make way for luxury flats, how democratic. I would say how tory but Labour would do the same
Traditional design and building techniques are more enduring, beautiful, eco friendly, easier to maintain, long lasting than modernist crap like this
Concrete is pretty economical and eco friendly.. compared to plastics and polymers. I think it’s all in perspective. Design changes, even “traditional” design. The Egyptians don’t build pyramids anymore,
@@bricecine funny thing about concrete is that we’re running out of the suitable sand necessary to make it. In any case it may be better than polymers but inferior to traditional techniques, unless you’re trying to build an eyesore
Many of the new builds are there now and nothing like the towers shown in the video. Much better proportioned, contemporary standard dwellings with decent public spaces and shops too.
Any city you see 19-60 s architecture it looks shit ,it just looks horrible I hate it demolish the lot in my book
So anything you don't like should be demolished? What if I like its grand, fortress-like, socialist feel?
Dream? It was a slum
Too bad no imagination to retrofit this estate ... move / rehouse all the families & redesign /reprogrammed for “hôtel industriel” / light -industrial manufacturing live/work studios for artists-crafts people & entrepreneurs. I see amazing opportunity. I don’t see traditional housing demographic enjoying living here. Not a bad design ... just an ill-fit socioeconomic demographic occupancy.
Sorry guys...but this had to come down. It's so ugly and a detriment to the local society that it's better replaced. Anyone can have good memories anywhere.....its the company you keep that counts most....but buildings should not be this depressing!
Very good review. I might add that the whole of inner London smells like piss.
London lacks only the Singapore Police Dept (and court system) to make it a utopia. ;')
Architects: "Fuck public opinion, we build concrete eyesores, you can hate it but nevertheless you must see it every day haha"
Also architects: "wHy tHeY tEaR dOwN tHeSE bEaUtIfUl bUiLdInGS?"
Nihilist, Marxist monstrosity for serfs. They couldn't tear it down fast enough for humanity. Just like when they bulldozed vibrant black communities in the US and built the projects. It's sickening. Soul killing architecture from a dystopian nightmare.
The estate design have no problem. The problem were always the wrong kind of people living there, unappreciated, vandalised, destroy everything, neglect from council.
Same everywhere. They disrespected it, vandalised burnt it. Now they lose it for rich people's housing. It's the chav problem tenants that are the issue.
Provocative & perfect lie by AR
+Alex Just works for or is one of the developers.