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'Royal Crescent' of East End to be demolished
Mira Bar-Hillel01.07.08
A dilapidated east London council block today faces demolition after Heritage Minister Margaret Hodge resisted a last-minute campaign by leading architects to have it listed.
Robin Hood Gardens, near the north end of the Blackwall Tunnel in Tower Hamlets, has 600 tenants - 80 per cent of whom want it demolished to make way for new homes.
But leading architects, including Lord Rogers, who designed Heathrow's Terminal 5, and Jonathan Glancey, had called on the Government to save the Seventies block.
They describe it as a modern version of Bath's Georgian terrace-the Royal Crescent. The estate was designed in 1972 by husband and wife Peter and Alison Smithson, influential advocates of the "Clockwork Orange" style of brutalist concrete architecture.
The architectural-establishment, led by Lord Rogers and RIBA president Sunand Prasad, launched an 11th-hour bid to save it from demolition by having it listed.
But the Evening Standard has learned that Ms Hodge will today decide against listing the building.
She will say: "I have received expert advice and opinion from a number of sources and was shown round the estate a few days ago to see it for myself, both inside and out.
"The architects' brief was to design a place fit for people to live, of course. But in that respect I agree with my expert advisers English Heritage that it simply doesn't work.
"Features such as the stairwells and the boundary wall demonstrate the 'bleakness of design' that the experts have highlighted."
She added: "While it was designed by distinguished architects, I do not think that their reputation outweighs the evidence-that Robin Hood Gardens was not innovative in terms of the 'streets-in-the-air' concept and it is not fit for purpose."
The Smithsons had been inspired by Le Corbusier, the French-born pioneer of Modernist architecture who is widely credited as the father of high-rise living.
The estate covers about two hectares and consists of two long blocks, one of 10 storeys the other of seven, built from precast concrete slabs and containing 213 flats, surrounding a landscaped green area and a small hill made from construction spoil.
The homes are a mixture of single-storey flats and two-storey maisonettes, with wide balconies on every third floor.
Reader views (3)
No, you've got your priorities all wrong. This must become the Olympic Village.
- John Frum, Bracknell
Relocate the council tenants to new homes and then use the building to accommodate MPs who do not live in London.
The change would come into effect at the next general election when all newly elected MPs would no longer have an entitlement to tax payer funded mortgages, instead the would be allocated accommodation in this building.
This would allow all theses new tory MPs know how people in the real world have to live.
- Melvyn, Canvey Island, Essex
...including Lord Rogers, ...and Jonathan Glancey, had called on the Government to save the Seventies block.
In coming to this decision, and inflicting untold costs on the Owners - Can they confirm that, without qualification, they are both prepared to live in this building, and Pay towards the upkeep.
Ah Yes - I thought not.
- Howard, Potters Bar
