Robin Hood Gardens
in undefined, United KingdomCategory: Attraction
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Flat 7 Willis House, Hale Street, London E14 0BX, United Kingdom Print route »
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Robin Hood Gardens was 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 Tower Hamlets Council became the landlord.
The scheme which was the first major housing scheme built by the Smithsons, consisted of two blocks of 10 and 7 storeys; it embodied ideas first published in their failed attempt to win the contract to build a scheme at 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. The eastern block still with tenants in is to be demolished later. The site will contain 1,575 residences.Part of the building has been preserved by the Victoria and Albert Museum and was presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018.
