Human Monstrosity

Well, I was going to stay out of this topic as it has been the subject of much heated debate and angst amongst fellow architects lately, but here goes.

This is Robin Hood Gardens, a large block of flats designed by the Smithsons in the late Sixties. I won't bore you with the history of the Modern movement, but let us just say it is one of the last gasps of a kind of architecture that seemed a good idea at the time, and thoroughly up-to-the-minute in the early 20th century. It started with the likes of Le Corbusier and other, well known and feted architects who were very good at designing chairs and houses made of concrete slabs with floor to ceiling glass windows. I know I'm being simplistic, but a history of modern architecture is not the point of this post.

By the time we reach the late Sixties and start that decade that taste forgot, the Seventies, such buildings were beginning to look a little.... dated. They were built to house a lot of people, as cheaply as possible; mainly at the expense of small, normal sized houses, each with little gardens, which of course were simply not on if you were a) a member of a right on London council, or b) an architect. Put these two together and...

The architect produces wonderful drawings and models, colourwashed perspectives showing a glowing building on a sunny day, with shiny happy people skipping and leaping along the 'streets in the sky' (the police officers among you will know them as booby traps for perps to chuck bricks from). Around the foot of the great edifice are swathes of green lawns, public gardens, trees and even a little pond. The architect puffs up, full to the brim with the vigour that the Modernist religion gives him, whilst his supplicants, the Council officers, gasp with astonishment at such vision.

The following year, the Council finish their 'consultation', where they ask locals whether or not they want their little terraced houses destroyed to make way for the monolith in the picture. Whether they do or not, the outcome is predetermined. Everything is levelled and construction begins in earnest, the thing built quickly out of huge slabs of concrete and shortly, the residents are moved in. At first, all is well. Running water! A bathroom! A window with a view! Light!

Skip forwards to our own dark times.

The British weather is not kind to concrete, and it is stained with dark streaks from rain and dirt. Bits are beginning to deteriorate and the wet is getting to the reinforcement, blowing off the concrete cover, causing more damage. The gardens, maintained for only a couple of years by the council before the budget was spent on Diversity Awareness Officers, are now havens for fly tippers, perverts and gangs of hoodies. The dark, graffitted corridors and stairwells stink of wee, and shifty looking men and youths push drugs, knives and guns. The windows leak and the place is impossible to heat effectively. The lifts are never working, and the young mother has to pull her childs buggy, shopping and baby up five floors - she daren't leave something behind for another trip as it will be stolen the minute she turns her back. Most of the front doors have bars across them. The streets in the sky are great for yobs to throw things at the neighbours, the police, the ambulance staff, the postman and whoever else is trying to carry out their normal business.

The very form of such buildings does not exactly encourage crime, as it is people, not architecture, who perpetrate it, but the design does make it a lot easier for those whose main mission in life is to make things miserable for others, or who think of nothing but their next fix and their next miserable little petty crime.

This building was due to be demolished and there was an outcry from the architectural profession (not all of them, I hasten to add) and a campaign to get the horrible thing listed. Listed! As an important architectural statement, as something to be held up as a good example of its kind! English Heritage carried out an inspection and report and decided that no, it is not a good example of its kind.

I think it should be recorded in a film or animated 'fly through' to warn architecture students how not to do it. Whether they will listen or not remains to be seen.