Robin Hood Gardens Blackwall Reach The search for a sense of place A report by Graham Stewart WILD ReSEARCH Table of contents About the Author and Wild ReSearch 2 Preface 3 The Smithsons’ vision 4 The Place 7 Bring on the Brutalists 10 Streets in the Sky 12 A Home and a Castle? 14 What Went Wrong? 15 Renovation or Demolition? 16 Redeveloping Blackwall Reach 19 Urban Connections 20 References 24 The search for a sense of place 1 About the Author About Wild ReSearch Graham Stewart is Associate Director of Wild ReSearch and Wild ReSearch is the thought leadership and advisory division a noted historian of twentieth-century British politics, society of Wild Search, a boutique executive search business. We and the media. A former leader writer and columnist for The specialise in working with charities, educational organisations, Times, his is the newspaper’s official historian and author of The housing providers, arts, organisations and trade bodies and Murdoch Years. His other publications include the internationally rural organisations. Wild ReSearch provides research, analysis acclaimed Burying Caesar: Churchill, Chamberlain and the and project management for clients wishing to commission Battle for the Tory Party and he has also been a nominee for their own reports, in addition to organising events to launch the Orwell Prize, Britain’s most prestigious award for political such publications. writing. His sixth book, a study of British politics, culture and Our first publication, by Edward Wild and Neil Carmichael society in the 1980s will be published in January 2013. MP, was entitled ‘Who Governs the Governors? School A graduate of St Andrews University and with a PhD from governance in the Twenty-First Century. Following the launch, Cambridge University, he is a senior research fellow at the an All Party Parliamentary Group on Education Governance Humanities Research Institute at Buckingham University. and Leadership was formed. For further details please call 0207 233 2230 2 Robin Hood Gardens • Blackwall Reach Preface: community. In many cases, they made it clear that the ‘project’ form for a community had failed and that the projects needed to History Lessons be redeveloped. The ‘HOPE VI program’ provided the funding and mechanisms for this on condition that there be intense engagement of residents and the citizens of the city in which the By Ray Gindroz FAIA projects were located. In nearly every case, these transformations Principal Emeritus, Urban Design Associates had an extremely positive impact on not only the lives of residents, but also the adjacent areas of the city by creating urbanism. Graham Stewart’s writing is a result of rigorous research and Graham Stewart’s essay poses a series of challenges and documentation of both the ideals of large scale twentieth lessons for those involved in implementing the regeneration century housing constructions and their problems. He does of Blackwall Reach. For example, with the disappearance of not make judgements, but relies on documented statements surrounding industrial uses, the introverted form of Robin of those in the best position to make them: residents, English Hood Gardens needs to be replaced with a more open form Heritage and Peter Smithson himself. that connects with the adjacent communities in an organic way. As someone whose career spans the full cycle described in Extending Poplar High Street to Naval Row, providing an active this publication, I find his account of the period to be helpful facade along Cotton Street and creating a Station Square are in sorting out the strengths and weaknesses of the era’s elements of the master-plan which respond to this challenge. enthusiasms. But, to be successful, the character and quality of these spaces I began with great enthusiasm for the visionary work of Le will need to be carefully developed as the abstract forms of the Corbusier and his followers. In 1963, as a young architect, I master-plan are transformed into a living environment. stayed in Le Corbusier’s Unite d’ Habitation Marseille block and The lessons of the past warn of the danger involved in was inspired by a long visit to the Park Hill Estate in Sheffield creating a monolithic housing estate rather than an urban when it was partially complete and the first streets were being quarter rather than an urban quarter with both a variety of occupied. The idea of ‘streets in the sky,’ large open spaces on public spaces at different scales and a diverse building stock. the ground, and wonderful views from every room of every unit, For a safe and welcoming urban realm, the architecture seemed to be the best way forward for cities. needs to provide maximum interaction and visual connection And then in the course of the past fifty years, I experienced between dwellings and public spaces. first-hand the severe problems and disastrous results of It is now understood that to build a socially sustainable efforts that conceived the city as a single work of architecture, community, there needs to be a wide mix of type and tenure of especially in the form of large scale projects designed for a low housing. This is particularly challenging in view of the crushing income population. demand for affordable housing and the London Borough of Early in the Housing Reform movements around the world, Tower Hamlets’ commitment to meeting that demand, with a low income housing was provided in buildings that were ‘part of resultant high density of development. It also means a wide the city’ and, as such, embedded in the urban fabric. But in the range of services and other uses, so Blackwall Reach becomes post-war period they expanded into enormous housing ‘estates’ a fully functioning community. (‘projects’ in the United States) that were ‘apart from the city.’ And most importantly, the process of transforming the Lacking critical qualities of urbanism – human scale public diagrammatic forms of the current master-plan should engage spaces with a mix of uses and activities – they failed to provide existing and future residents and the wider community in the frameworks that can foster the creation of social capital Poplar as well as the responsible agencies. The history of the and respond to changing life styles and populations. Most site demonstrates the dangers of building a vision that may not importantly, they lacked connections to their contexts, both be in tune with the experiences and aspirations of those who physically and socially, leading to isolation and stigmatization will live in it. Without their involvement, there is the danger of of their residents. repeating history. By the late 1970s the ‘estate’ or ‘project’ approach was failing to serve its residents and was compromising the health of the cities it inhabited. The process of dismantling the system and trying to return to a more urban approach was beginning. In the United States, the ‘HOPE VI Program’ of the 1990s demolished many such projects and transformed their sites into mixed income, mixed use neighbourhoods. This programme had its origins in the emergence of tenant rights organizations which gave residents a voice in determining the quality of their The search for a sense of place 3 The Blackwall Reach site with the Aspen Way and Blackwall DLR station in the foreground and Robin Hood Gardens in the centre of the picture. and designing within that constraint or by redeveloping the The Smithsons’ Vision area as a means of challenging the sense of confinement? The Smithsons opted for the former solution. In doing so, they succeeded in creating a genuinely tranquil – if hardly ‘The theme of Robin Hood Gardens’ wrote Peter Smithson, picturesque or even especially recreational – green space in ‘is protection. To achieve a calm centre, the pressures of the the midst of a heavily urban context. But as accommodation external world are held off by the buildings and outworks.’1 blocks, Robin Hood Gardens failed those it was designed The 214 flats in two facing slab blocks that he and his wife to serve for reasons this publication will explore. Learning Alison designed in 1968 therefore part-enveloped a communal from the mistakes is central to ensuring a better future for landscaped area and, by holding it in their embrace, created a everyone interested in building a better Blackwall Reach. barrier that shut out the noise – and also the bustle – of Poplar While many architects handed the brief to design what became and that ‘external world’ beyond. Robin Hood Gardens might have approached the constraints Anyone who comes to Robin Hood Gardens today can see of the site with trepidation, Alison and Peter Smithson saw it as what Alison and Peter Smithson intended. This stretch of the a tremendous opportunity. The moat-like isolation that the busy 7.8 hectare Blackwall Reach site presents the urban planner bordering thoroughfares gave it from the rest of Poplar suited as much as the architect with considerable dilemmas since perfectly the attitude of the husband and wife architectural it is bounded north, east and west by busy roads and, to the practice. In their designs, their teaching and their theorising, south, by both the Aspen Way (the A1261) and the elevated the couple rejected the role of the traditional interconnecting track-line of the Docklands Light Railway. It is, in effect, a large urban streetscape. As the architect Ken Baker – who worked traffic island with a patch of greenery at the centre, around with the Smithsons – has put it, ‘the theory was that new roads which residents live in concrete slab blocks. would be carved through the city allowing for the development The core issue is simply stated: is the best living of buildings around pedestrian areas, free of cars and general environment created by accepting the limitations of this site traffic.’2 Blackwall Reach was thus the perfect site, surrounded 4 Robin Hood Gardens • Blackwall Reach Robin Hood Gardens from Blackwall DLR station.