Brutalist flat wins pride of place in V&A exhibition
Maisonette on notorious east London estate to be resurrected as an architectural treasure
THE Victoria and Albert Museum has acquired a part of Robin Hood Gardens, east London, one of Britain’s most notorious council estates, to display as an architectural treasure.
The site was secured as bulldozers moved in to demolish the Poplar flats.
Measuring 29ft high, 18ft wide and 26ft deep, it comprises both the exterior and interior of a maisonette.
The V&A currently has rooms that recreate the Renaissance interior of the Old Palace at Bromley-by-bow, and the panelled 18th-century Music Room of Norfolk House, the London residence of the dukes of Norfolk.
Robin Hood Gardens deserves its place alongside them as “a nationally important and internationally recognised work of Brutalist architecture”, said the museum.
Designed by Alison and Peter Smithson, who envisaged its elevated walkways as “streets in the sky”, it opened in 1972. But many regard it as a failed experiment, full of design flaws. The es- tate was poorly maintained and ravaged by crime.
Despite a campaign by leading architects and the Twentieth Century Society to save it, demolition work is now under way.
New developments will be built on the site as part of a £300 million regeneration of the estate.
Dr Neil Bingham, the V&A’S curator of contemporary architectural collections, said: “The V & A’s acquisition of a section of Robin Hood Gardens, complete with front and back facades, will motivate new thinking and research into this highly experimental period of British architectural and urban history.”
The preserved interior includes design features incorporated by the Smithsons: kitchen cupboards, an airing cupboard and the stairs.
The new acquisition could be displayed in the V&A’S new east London outpost, which is scheduled to open on the Olympic Park site in 2021.
Olivia Horsfall Turner, a senior curator on the project, said the notoriety of the estate will be referenced in the display.
“It is very important to us to hold on to the controversy that came with this building right from the start. We want to document that and to present a balanced view.
“We will explore the Smithsons’ theory and vision but not airbrush out the fact that there were problems,” she said.
One of the biggest cheerleaders for Robin Hood Gardens was Lord Rogers, the architect, who described it as “the
best piece of social and architectural thinking in the last 50 years”. In 2015, he told Radio 4’s Today programme that he would be happy to live there, prompting unhappy residents to issue an open invitation.
They complained that the estate had been left to rot, with leaking ceilings, a patchy electricity and water supply and no security.
An attempt to have the estate listed in 2009 was knocked back when English Heritage said it “fails as a place for human beings to live”.