Depending who you ask, Robin Hood Gardens is either a bold and exciting expression of modernism or a concrete carbuncle. I though I’d take a look before it disappears. ko-fi.com/jago... / jagohazzard
5:23 Various prominent architects: It's a horrible place to live there, but somebody has to because it's "hugely significant". Maybe it can be a place for "prominent architects" to live.
I like this idea, turn at least one of these monstrosities in each country into an architectural reservation, and if the architects do not live there, they are not allowed to design in that style. But architectural societies have enormous power.
I'm an architect. I remember reading about it in architectural books back in college (no internet then) and admiring it (in drawings that's it). Later I moved to London (early 2000s) and every time I passed by in the DLR I was thinking that must be the ugliest building I have seen in my life (and there are few competitors around). I only realized it was the building in the books like a year later. I finally went to visit inside the gardens, the place was just dreadful (and other things), I left in 5 mins. I would still save it though, but as a reminder to future architects to take people's life seriously and not just draw pretty diagrams for themselves. And as a perfect dystopian movie setting...
My friend had a flat here 18 years ago, I stayed there with her on occasion and essentially inside it was a nice flat and really quite large, the layout was strange, the kitchen/diner was the only room downstairs with the stairs running immediately beside the door. The stairs led to the centre of the upper floor with 2 bedrooms and a small bathroom to the left and the living room to the right. There was a small balcony running along the bedroom side but it couldn't be used as it was absolutely caked in pigeon poop despite the netting. The estate itself was an absolute dive, but that had more to do with the residents and their offspring than the area or buildings. Home is what you make it
One key factor is that how a place looks is the most important part of whether they take care of it or not. Pride is a significant motivator. It sounds like the layout is well designed for efficient living, which is nice, but when the building looks like shit, people will treat it like shit. Certainly the residents housed there are less likely to treat it well - it is still 'rented' and housing antisocial people. But you can't blame the residents, this was literally built to specifically house them. If the better layout alone helped it would make perfect sense to put problem tenants there. One key part is the "community" space is perhaps much more of a negative in an antisocial community and more likely to bring conflict. In streets, you have multiple options for which way you can go and can avoid streets you don't like. Instead this was developed on the soviet mentality that people are a product of their conditions alone and a utopia will spring up in the right setting.
@@carbon1255 interesting. I’ll preface this with acknowledging that I know nothing about architecture, town planning etc. What is the solution to the need for social housing coupled with the need to reduce urban sprawl? I don’t disagree about the inherent issue with high density housing but it seems like it is unavoidable in the long run. So is there any way of producing high density urban social housing where one doesn’t immediately fall into the trap you outlined?
This looks to me like the kind of estate where local councils, with government funding increasingly reduced, made the mistake of not doing any maintenance until it was absolutely necessary. This short-sighted approach meant that in many cases much more money was needed in the long run and building began to look very shabby quite quickly. As a resident it would be difficult to take pride in a building that no-one else is looking after, and inevitably those who could move away would. These factors create a downward spiral of decay where the only exit strategy for the council is to sell it off to a developer.
No in London its no accident, its a deliberate policy of social cleansing. Look at every estate of this era and they are either 'restored' into flats for the rich or demolished so that flats for the rich can be built.
@@jamesneedham6265 Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - you're making a logical fallacy and seeing conspiracy. It's not a policy, it's simply what to do with tower blocks that you can't house the lower social strata in without it becoming a nightmare of social problems and lawlessness. After all, they do have to house them somewhere else, it's not like they bus them off to the gas chambers.
@@smorris12 No its far worse they bus them off to Stoke on Trent. But seriously read the work of anna minton, big capital especially. These redeveloped estates never build as many units of social housing as was there before and while that could be a sensible policy of creating a more mixed community, it isn't because the majority of residents kicked out of their homes do not find places in the same boroughs. Also its worth pointing out in many cases the residents kicked out are not council tenants but have bought their home as part of right to buy and are forced out by compulsory purchase with offers way below market value.
@@jamesneedham6265 Yes, and right to buy is offered far, far, below market value? Why should they be offered a house at a lose to the taxpayer, only to be reimbursed full price, at an even great loss to the taxpayer? What housing was there before WW2, and what was the social, ethnic, and cultural make-up of these areas? You said they can’t resettle in the same borough, and yet less than half a century ago the residents were replaced wholesale anyway. There is no tradition or ‘right’ for anyone to claim they’re from that borough when their family has only been rooted there for less than 3 generations.
@@jamesneedham6265 Give me Stoke over the smoke any day! By definition they can't build as many units as they need to reduce the housing density to reduce the problems of hi-rise. Local government housing (of which I have friends who work in the industry) does its best to create housing within a framework of land-owners, current government policy, the demands of the residents based on need (disability etc), NIMBYism etc etc. and tries to steer a path through it all that houses people. There's a lot more accountability and oversite to avoid corruption now than in days gone by so mostly it's trying to get things done. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity!
I feel concrete just isn't a good building material for Northern Europe with its high rainfall. It doesn't look half bad in arid Spain or the sunnier parts of Greece, but in the UK the rain stains it making it hideous
@@stevenflebbe The Barbican, while horrifically ugly, has benefited from money being spent on maintaining it. Without this money it would be just another graffiti-covered, piss-stained concrete hellhole, like so many of the brutalist-descended buildings around the country. The idea that any of them are worthy of preservation just boggles the mind. As Jago said, most of the pressure to list Robin Hood Gardens came from architects and, looking at some of the garbage that wins, for example, the Stirling Prize, we can see how little regard we should pay to their views.
I love the way the creators of these hell zones call them "Gardens". "Well, there's a scraggy piece of grass covered in dog sh*t and a tree that was alive a few years ago."
There's a semi serious rule of thumb about council housing that the more rural and idyllic sounding the name the bigger a crime ridden shithole it is. So beware some estate called Willow tree Meadows or Fluffydown Green.
Yes, many English places have ridiculous names. The cities are full of quarters called "hill" but there's absolutely no bump to stick out. Or this shithole being called a garden.
@@thedman1696 Because they are there 24/7 in the summer. You have to wait for the cold or wet weather to be able to use it or when it's too hot to be outside so then have to brave extreme weather that the chavs can't bear.
The problem it was trying to solve was ignored. They built it in Hell. It's sandwiched between 5 lanes of traffic to the East, 4 lanes of traffic to the West, 8 to the North and another 4 to the South.
I went round Robin Hood Gardens about 20 years ago. The flats are a good size and the landscaping was very attractive - but the location is atrocious. Still, I think the idea put forward in this film, of doing them up as student accommodation, would have been a good one. I don't think the new buildings there will be anything like as spacious or attractive.
I don't know whats worse, the fact that its been left to rot all this time, or the fact that the redevelopment looks just as depressing, just with reduced ambition
I'd give it another 70 year or so and we'll have a new generation of people calling out these new developments. The skewed windows annoy me to no end...
Just sums up everything wrong with the country. Nobody, absolutely nobody, gives a toss about the 99% of the country as they can screw more money from the 1% who have enough money they don't care that they are being screwed.
@@mstevens113 wait what, your comment is totally arse backwards. Wages have been stagnant for normal people for decades, not matching inflation and not even close to matching productivity. While the 1% specifically the 0.1% skim that off everyone else. Billionaires hoards Rose by 27% during the pandemic. While doctors and nurses have got 0% pay rise. But have been promised as much as 1% pay rise! Maybe in the future, lucky them...
“Architecture is a very dangerous job. If a writer makes a bad book, eh, people don’t read it. But if you make bad architecture, you impose ugliness on a place for a hundred years.” - Renzo Piano
comming from they guy responsible for the center pompidou in Paris, the building that looks like is permanently in construction. and the shard in London. I'm not shure, but it looks like he is guilty of the thing he is criticizing
The difference being, if a writer doesn't sell any books, he/she goes hungry, while the architect has already banked his fat cheque on construction completion
Maybe it would have looked better if they had built it underground and just grassed over the top. The construction does look like it would make a good fallout bunker.
I had a girlfriend who lived there in the late 80s. From the outside it was ghastly but the flats were not bad. Kitchen and living room upstairs and bedroom downstairs. Having spent a lot of time there I would be on the side of demolition. Ugly spaces make for ugly outcomes socially, that been said the whole area was ugly in the late 80s and Robin Hood Gardens sort of fit in.
"Modern tower blocks encourage antisocial behavior" "Yes we are going to fix that!" "But how?" "Here is this new style called brutalism, hated by the public, ugly as hell and looks depressing"
@@dagwould It actually can. The more nooks and crannies you create, the more space there is for antisocial behavior. Also, if you move into this beautiful apartment that's clearly being taken care of, people have a higher chance of taking care of it too. But if it's already trashed and old, they don't bother. The environment DOES affect behavior, I hope you'll do some research on that (it's a big topic in Social Work actually)
@@dagwould Surroundings do affect people, very much. The more artificial everything becomes the more insane people become, that's why there is so much crime in cities than natural environments.
Maybe if architects were forced by law to live in their creations for at least a year after completion, they might design them a little more sympathetically.
@@tiny_gabi_ Consider the high rises in NY next to Central Park, sometimes it is all about the location. But in the end: If there are people prepared to pay to live somewhere, it will be a decent place to live. If not, it will be a dump. Doesn't really matter if it is a highrise, a villa suburb or a cottage in the woods.
there's a building set in New York, Silver Towers, that looks very similar, the major difference is that Silver Towers is housing for professors and well off staff of New York University. the expectation that architecture will solve economic issues of un or under employment, poverty wages is misguided...
Many of the residents liked it, indeed the flats themselves where fantastic. With Robin Hood gardens the problems design wise are the decks where too narrow and the stairs claustrophobic. Also another big flaw, arguably the biggest, was the fact anyone could access the decks which was solved with the simple addition of a security door. Another problem was the parkland as parks are in reality, dangerous indeed any are of nature is at night if its not policed and maintained. One of the oftern ignored aspects of the research by Jane Jacobs is how anti parks she was a most violent crimes happen within urban parkland and so by siting a building in parkland you create a building that's dangerous to access at night.
@@jamesneedham6265 I lived in RHG for 3 years and agree about the flats themselves - when you finally reached you flat it was quite reasonable inside. The buildings themselves were, of course, hideous and did nothing to encourage any sort of community spirit. I don't think I ever went down to the park space between the blocks during the whole of the time I lived there. The entrances to the blocks were on the other sides of the buildings so there was no danger in accessing at night. When I was living there the estate was owned and maintained by the Greater London Council which was much more capable, and probably more willing, to maintain it than Tower Hamlets Council which took it over. That takeover must have signalled the end of a very poorly designed experiment.
Its nigh impossible to get to or from these blocks, I dont think the replacements will be much better. Its a place I find difficult to get an opinion on, some idea that maybe residents should have had a contribution to what they would like the place to look like, but it was designed really at a time when no-one had noticed that the entire east end (bar a few folk) were off to Stevenage and Basildon. Space but access back to the city.
Good news for Londoners. Robin Hood is also a named eastern entrance for Richmond Park. Nice leafy area and lovely gardens and lush greenery expand out with deer happily roaming as if out on a nature reservation. So Londoners can envisage that picture when hearing "Robin Hood" to banish the terrible nightmare , dystopian vision that the Smithson's gave of our future.
As someone living I cologne I’m not surprised. But visit Lisbon, Turin, nice, Granada, Amsterdam, Rome, Venice, Seville, Porto . The list goes on. Please don’t extrapolate to the rest of Europe how ugly German cities are
This isn't fair, they ONLY had the inhabitants in mind- but they thought about people more like cattle & the issues with soviet thought in general, that these oppressive structures cure inequality.
Aesthetically, it could be dressed up with a pressure-washing of the concrete, and some really sharp, well-designed window frames. I mean large 2-storey maisonettes--with *private garages*--just blocks from Canary Wharf? AYFKM? Of course you don't want to move the poor and the unemployed in there.
@@HwoarangtheBoomerang Communist housing worked in Chile but ignorant Europeans just know about their own experience. What can be expected of rough and uncouth commoners such as yourself.
@@lena-sophiewagner2280 Exactly, I think a good part of the reason why it looks so depressing is because it's just so grey and dull. If it was painted in bright colours and maybe had some art or interesting sculptures on it then it would look a lot better (though still not great, there's only so much you can do to disguise the fact that it's a concrete block)
I'm pretty sure I've seen this specific building in _several_ zombie apocalypse movies, which tells me it produces just the right level of existential dread and anomie to form a short-hand for cultural breakdown. It reminds of me Brasilia, a city designed and built from the ground up by urban planners to turn all of their models and theories into reality in order to produce a perfect city of the future. Today, Brasilia is the closest thing on Earth to a post-apocalyptic hellscape with a homicide rate higher than that of many countries offically at war.
@@JagoHazzard You know, a sort of overview of London-based filming locations for different films might make for an interesting video. A lot of them show up frequently.
Isn't Brasilia empty and cut of by forest, also it was used in the movie aeon flux, best thing in that film lol, I don't think it Is much like this place though.
If it's anything like 'Kidbrooke village' they'll just rebuild the same same but different, with less open space between blocks, and label it luxury....
@@mugofbrown6234 I remember the early days of my childhood you could walk from one end to the other on the high level and wouldnt get wet in the rain. Then they started to block bits off as it was a hotbed of crime...
@@annother3350 Yes that was great. You could choose which staircases to go up or down and which level you wanted to traverse. Just a shame the council didn't put the money in to keep it maintained.
@@amandajane8227 I think, as usual, it became a sink estate. I knew people who knew the first wave of residents and they seemed nice and to look after each other and the estate. By the time I had to walk through it, it had deteriorated and was full of graffitti, stolen burned out cars and BNP supporters who would come into our school and beat up unsuspecting black boys on a regular basis...
I wanted it to work. To enjoy those ‘cranked’, ‘articulated’ streets in the air. So I went and had a look. Got inside, wandered along the windswept, weather-facing corridors, nipped up and down the narrow, concrete stairwells. Heard a bang, echoing, somewhere not far enough away. Never felt so claustrophobic, or scared, in my life. When I got back to land, I breathed again.
Tower blocks were an improvement for the first few years that people lived in them according to the residents themselves because I've read lots of accounts of it, but they deteriorated pretty quickly after that because concrete ages really badly.
"Wikipedia says that the eastern block was demolished in 2019, but I have reason to believe they may be mistaken." You mean like its still being quite evidently there when you go past it?
@@John_Wood_ At the time the video was recorded, Wikipedia said that both had been demolished. Jago says the words I quoted. Hence that bit being in quotation marks.
I once slagged this building off. Some one, actually called Delboy, in the car said that they grew up there, it was lovely inside and built for the comfort of the residents. I learned to be more humble that day, not to make a judgement based on personal ignorance. It was a good life lesson. Do not judge a book by its cover. I later did a Rolling Stones tour with Delboy. Fantastic guy.
That's silly. If it looks awful, slag it off. We all have to pass such eyesores.If someone gives a personal insight of living there, that makes your knowledge of it richer but it doesn't mean pipe down and keep quiet about what caused you to slag it off in the first place: exterior ugliness - that bloke didn't live on the outside of it, and probably he might have agreed with you, exterior wise.
@@flashtrash7830 That's right. I remember coming 'home' to my awful council block. Not a very welcome sight and didn't help make me feel comfortable or that I belonged. In other words the looks of the building I lived in alienated me. Sure, if you've all got loads of money, you could live in the Barbican, in spite of it being a concrete monstrosity.
Leaving aside the questions of social engineering or architects being out of touch, my mind kept going back to the Colliers Wood Tower. I couldn't help wondering if those who voted Colliers Wood the ugliest building in London had ever seen Robin Hood Gardens.
So I Googled that and I'm sorry, but I have to agree with this dubious award. At least Robin Hood Gardens tried some interesting things, both conceptually and visually. It failed utterly and is an eyesore by modern standards, but it's not as grim and totally devoid of imagination as that Colliers Wood building.
I might suggest equally ugly in slightly different ways 😅. But really, I was giving a shout out to another Jago video on Colliers Wood Tower. If you haven't seen it, you can find it here... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1gRSP-VbTW0.html
There's a massive redevelopment of Paddington going on - almost finished now. And a small 1950s block of council flats was knocked down for a massive trendy block of new apartments. And I often wonder if the original inhabitants were offered a place in the nice new building ? - or shipped off to some other estate sone where .... and I bet I know the answer.
@blacknester i doubt it, when Ealing council knocked down my estate, all the disabled people had to leave the borough because they didn't build any disabled properties on the posh replacements, most of the residents were offered relocation to Wolverhampton which went down like a led balloon of course, all the stress put my father in hospital but the council eventually rehoused him in a crumbling 100 year old terrace elsewhere in the borough which has a tonne of problems they never fix. The south Acton estate was a collection of 2 to 4 bedroom homes spread across a verity of masonets, bungalows and tower blocks with lifts, everyone had a car parking space and there was garages available to rent. The new posh and private estate offered less then 20% of the social housing the original estate had, studio flats only, no parking, and poor doors to the stairs to get up to the social housing on the upper floors, needless to say they didn't get many takers, especially since most of the residents of the estate were families like mine whod been there 40 odd years and the aforementioned disabled people. It was all deliberate I only know one 1 person who took up the offer. Also Ealing council wanted to boot everyone out well ahead of time so they could rent their flats out on short leases to students and things for extra money, they (the council) litterally kicked the garden gate in on my parents masonet and refused to fix it, leading to my parents place getting burgled via the french windows that lead to the garden, something that had never happened before.
@@GreatSageSunWukong a shocking story, but still relevant today. Many local council politicians have directorships, and work together with construction companies. Many people should investigate their respective councils, and look up individual politicians and see what type of gratuities are being handed out. A box at a football match for £500. Splendid meals in Covent Garden for £75 quid. Obviously the current situation has curtailed all that for the moment, but in my view its still an 'unethical practice'. They are obviously NOT attending to our business that we pay them for. They would soon complain and grumble if we 'withheld our council tax'. With regards to your family, this action taken against them is 'Social Cleansing'. It's disgusting and bloody shameful to treat people in this way. Horrendous. I send you my kind regards, and hopefully something will be sorted out soon to help vulnerable people. PS: please view this website, WhatDoTheyKnow.com You can browse and view freedom of information requests to local authorities. There is a goldmine of information on the site, well worth a look. Cheers.👍
@blacknester they use compulsory purchase orders, you don't have a choice. Not that you'd want to buy a council flat anyway, they charge you for building repairs and upkeep of the estate, my aunt bought her council place in North London, she died oweing the local council over 20k for such works she had no say in.
There's are a few comments about how this project would be much better appreciated and a better habitat if it was cleaned up or better maintained. Brings back memories of my dad who came home a broken man day after day for a period of about 12 months when he was working improving and maintaining similar areas of London. Each and every day he would get to work to have all his previous days work demolished, burnt down, or vandalised. He even received regular abuse and threats while working. My dad was tough but that level of disrespect and abuse was hard for him to handle.
The destruction was due to the attitude of not having any skin in the game by the residents. They do not have to pay fir upkeep so they don’t care if they destroy it. It’s the same way on this side of the pond. I delivered mail to a public housing development that was corporately owned. Those who were on full welfare status would cause ridiculous amounts of damage. They would get behind in their rent to the point of eviction or they would just skip out. One family skipped out on a Saturday night. It took a crew a month to fix all he damage they caused totaling $30,000. What did the residents care, they didn’t have to pay for it.
@@michaeljbrennan3728 Very questionable argument. I've seen horribly run-down privately-owned houses, and well-kept government-owned houses with tenants who've cared quite a bit for their homes (live in one myself). The points Jago brings up about unemployment, a feeling society doesn't care about you (often linked), and the fact that the government has to put those "problem persons" _somewhere_ seems like the major factors. Of course large blocks of (relatively) cheap housing will be the natural place for all those factors to intersect, so they get a bad rep. But if they didn't exist there wouldn't *not* be slums, it's just that the slums would be shanty towns instead. :-(
@@henrikgiese6316 talking about generalising, the privately owned estates where most of the flats are buy to let and many are rented out to council tenants who don't give a f. That sounds about right.
@@z00h Actually, the private houses I was thinking about are various single-family houses. Of course I don't know the owners, but from what I've heard illness, economic disaster, or just plain old age can cause maintenance to be ignored.
@@henrikgiese6316 The problem seems to be ''Problem families'', rather than the housing. A ''Problem family'' was put into a 'Middle class area'' by the council as an experiment...and it was a disaster. Police there 24/7 and neighbours intimidated. Some 'Problem families' think their notoriety is a kind of 'fame' of sorts...Very depressing.
This is not an area I'm familiar with, so it was a real treat watching this thoughtful and very informative video. You're a treasure. Thanks again for what you do.
I lived on a council housing estate for the first 18 years of life. My parents were one of the first occupants of Kendal House, Priory Green in Islington, Formally Finsbury at the time. The house, and it's sister Redington House, were designed by the same man who designed the Penguin Enclosure at London Zoo, Bernhard Lubetkin, (apologies if I got the name spelt wrong). It was a wonderful estate, friendly welcoming in my opinion well designed. All the tenants came from the same areas and probably knew each other, they would greet each other when in the street and pass pleasantries. I went back a couple of years ago, (I'm now 68), and the place was a mess, wire security fencing and buzzer entry to flats, graffiti all over the place but more significantly, no children playing in the playground. A sad reflection on today's standards.
The council schemes in my town were mostly lovely when I was wee, and on the whole they still are but there's always a bit where there are problem families or just people who are really struggling and need a lot of help. Problem is for the second group the help isn't there at the level they need. The last one I lived in was pretty good - kids played outside, there was no vandalism, not much trouble, some people were living in houses that had been their parents. It also had a good mixture of housing styles and accommodation for single people/couples as well as families. All of the flats had their own doors as well so no scary, dark closes.
It is utter hypocrisy for all these architects who started practicing in the 60s and 70s to start campaigning for their unpopular buildings to be listed. They spent their careers arguing that historic buildings should be knocked down and replaced with something that fits the spirit of the age. Now they're in their dotage and concerned about their legacy they want to protect their own failed structures.
I come from this area and have known this building for ever. Even as a kid it looked scary to me, and in my 50s now it still looks scary. Went to a house party there in the 80s, grim to say the least
When architects want to moralise rather than build beautiful, you get Robin Hood Gardens. Bright people with low empathy and high ambition who use the rest of us as a social experiment. A good job there are no parallels today, isn't it?
Fantastic turn of phrase.. "..Bright people with low empathy and high ambition ..." However, I'm now unable to read your post without hearing it in Jonathan Meades' voice.
It should've been listed - for immediate demolition. As a kid we used to say: "good riddance to bad rubbish". I say it now. It's awful, ugly, out of touch, condescendingly insulting, unlivable. Maybe someone should have suggested they live there themselves. Thank goodness it wasn't made a listed building.
Absolutely.These buildings have no real place in the real world of humanity. Both in living and beauty. At least vast mansions of the olden days had beauty to them and could still come to still be lived in by a few people if not the masses.
@@danielwhyatt3278 balfron is actually real cool and thamesmead had a super cool design that you couldn't find anywhere else whilst balfron is listed and remains standing to this day thamesmead was sadly demolished last year
it is ugly but frankly whatever you build - if you stick a bunch of c***ts in it and refuse to maintain it - it probably wont be the nicest place after a few decades.
Having lived in Hong Kong, I can say that I don't believe High Rise or High Density housing to be a problem, in and of itself. The problem (I believe), is in putting large numbers of socially inept people, into close proximity with one another. Having said that, building low cost poorly implemented housing and then allowing it to fall into disrepair, will foster unbearable tension within any community.
@@ketchuplad157 It was not meant as pejorative term. People can be socially inept for a variety of reasons and is not necessarily the fault of the person who suffers from it. In a situation such as this one, those who might be thought of as socially inept, have lived their whole life, in a small more or less closed community, where everyone there, is more or less the same. Since these people are also generally speaking, not well travelled, they have rarely encountered people who are significantly different from themselves. Planners, then force together large numbers of people, all of whom, are from different social paradigms, into developments such as Robin Hood Gardens. The fallout from what follows, is almost inevitable.
You are just too polite, there will always be a small section of society that is out to make life miserable for the rest of us. A spot of ink will taint a glass of clear water.
I am living in HK, the public estate built in 1970s and 80s have similar long airy corridors for residents to mingle and play mahjong. Which served their purpose and HK people enjoyed their time on the corridor especially during summer hot days.
As someone who has spent my 9-5 working in a brutalist building and found it extraordinarily depressing I cannot fathom how awful it must be to live in it as well
Great video thank you. Well the house I was brought up in had no hot water no central heating open coal fires, walls running with condensation, damp. privately owned by slum land lords. These new builds were paradise offering security, compared with those slum,and bomb sites I was brought up in. My friend lived at the top of a tower block at Southwark Park. What a view, pure luxury. The development in Dulwich known as the battle ship was very nice, a success had a sense of community. I lived in a flat a round the corner in an old house I looked on in envy.
I found this very interesting. I'm an architect at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), so it's fascinating to compare New York's public housing to that of a foreign city. NYCHA owns about 2,500 buildings housing 5% of the city's population, or a little over 400,000. And how many NYCHA buildings have we torn down since the first public housing development was built here in 1935? Just ONE. Even that was considered a wrong move by the tenants. NYCHA has many "superblock" developments - the key difference is that they are vertical in form, rather than horizontal, which seems to be more common in Europe. But New York is an inherently vertical city, so it fits. The superblock concept is pretty much dead in America, as most cities have demolished their public housing. They looked good on paper, but the reality was quite different. But as far as I know, we have nothing like this in New York. While a few have balconies, none have the outer walkways like Robin Hood. How are these estates maintained? Is there a super or other maintenance people employed on-site? Does it have elevators? What are the apartments like? It looks like not much if any funding has gone into this site for many years. At NYCHA, we are spending many billions on upgrading our buildings - new roofs, new elevators, new boilers, repointing brickwork, and on and on. We have a staff of 500 architects and engineers/construction managers, plus an army of consultants to handle the work we can't do in-house, which is like 90% of the workload. Of course, the population demographics within NYCHA has changed over the years, which brought "issues" to public housing, like increased crime, but there seems to be no solution for that. Unlike replacing a boiler. But hey, $100 a month for a subsidized apartment in Manhattan is a good deal, even if you have to put up with a few "problems."
'which brought "issues" to public housing, like increased crime, but there seems to be no solution for that' - there are plenty of solutions. but since we live in a world with an economic system which actively and shamelessly places profit over people, no profit can be made from those solutions, so they are not be pursued.
Sounds like for you work for NYCHA but haven’t been in an actual apartment inside of said buildings cause y’all buildings are HORRIBLE, sir. & that can’t be blamed on the “Changing of the demographics” so take that subtle racism elsewhere.
@@LususxNaturae Yes, I work for NYCHA as I said. I certainly have been in apartments. Some were awful, and some were unbelievable. I remember going into one apartment - and the tenants - a woman, her baby, and the baby daddy, had big beautiful white leather furniture all throughout their apartment, with marble flooring they installed on their own. Glass tables, and a big washer and dryer. Neither of them had a job, I would say. So...it's a real eye-opener to see the "poor or low-income" having nicer stuff than I had at the time. What a racket public housing can be. Yes, some developments are not good at all, but others are really nice. Some of the buildings we have, you would not know it's public housing. The changing demographics is absolutely true, no matter how much it may hurt your feelings.
I lived there from 1985 to 2015. The estate was allowed to run down and all of us residents have mixed view on what has happened. I'm still in the area but now in one of the new build of Blackwall Reach. One thing I definately agree, the estate wasnt given a fair chance and yes the new estate is dull and bland compared to what we had, especially during late 80s and late 90s
Maybe they are like Richard and Ruth Rogers who bought two houses in a beautiful Regency Terrace opposite the Royal Hospital and.... well the pictures are on the internet. I can't bring myself to describe the houses now. I've always said "Every architect is a graffiti artist at heart."
@@Stafford674 Only a superstar architect could make a mess like that. I counted 20 something steps on a single flight of stairs, wouldn't even meet building regs...
Could it be that the reason the buildings look like something out of Dredd is that's precisely where the comics/films/games got their idea of what that scenario should look like?
I don't think architects ever price a building and I will bet you that not one of the Architects involved would feasibly be able to afford one of the flats especially as that will just be a studio apartment.
That has nothing to do with the architects. Marketers insist on putting the word "only" before any price, these days, especially if it's a big one. Look at any car advert, for example.
I had a field trip there for a geography course back in university. This does bring back good memories from an academic perspective (brutalist architecture, social housing, tower blocks, regeneration, etc.), but probably not so good memories if I put myself in the shoes of the occupants of RHG. Personally, I think it's layer upon layer of problems that cannot be solved at once. Sure, you provide the bare essential of housing, but if its occupants are not harmonious and the surroundings are not managed well, it really is not worth it. I guess that's why the regeneration is taking place; to start afresh. All credit to the planners for trying to realise a vision that works in theory, but making it work in practice is another school of thought altogether. Either way, a good throwback to that field trip I went to.
'What is proposed is like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend." The Prince of Wales, 1984. This is what is required to have an effect!
One observation I’ve had of the success of housing blocks is climate. In Singapore ore Thailand in it works fine as people are dosed up with sun and vitamin d in the warm weather and a flat out of the heat is a relief. In poor old cloudy Britain this is not the case and the lack of garden or outside access makes people feel trapped and miserable, maybe I’m wrong what do you think?
Jago mentions Hunstanton School, by the same architects, and it's a great example of the climate issues you mention: According to Wikipedia, _The extensive use of glazing was a feature, but has become an environmental problem, as it produced a cold building in winter, and effectively a greenhouse in summer._
I understand studies have been done that show in the case of social housing, they should never be built higher than four stories.....in the sense that any higher, and people of low to moderate incomes and perhaps lower disposable incomes, begin to feel isolated, and and as you say, trapped and miserable. I have applied for new built social housing in my hometown....and it is five stories built on top of a seniors community centre. My only concern is that aside from the ground floor, which is concrete, the building is completely built of wood.
FMHammyJ That’s interesting as there was a report the other day that the inquiry into grenfell cladding system has been widened to include timber framed buildings. It’s coming out that the firebreaks between floors and properties are inadequate in real world situations. This is apparently going to make a whole new swathe of new build flats since the 00,s un mortgageable. It’s seems obvious even to laymen like us that building entire block from wood is asking for trouble. Maybe buy a respirator and have some climbing ropes stored in your flat after you move in.
I was born and raised here I would love to give my perspective. I now live in the new flats. I must say I prefer robin hood as with the walking area there was a sense of community with the neighbours. Now not so much which I really miss. Let me know if you would like an I interview with me will be more than happy to answers questions and comments.
That is the sad thing, the layouts are interesting (albeit wider staircases) and it would be nice to have a pitched roof and pillars on the balconies and decoration- however decoration is heresy to brutalist architects- they believe the soviet ideal is correct and that decoration is a capitalist corruption that breeds inequality.
This problem of something being liked by architects and ONLY architects is something we had here in Bulgaria too: the 1300 years of Bulgaria monument in Sofia that had deteriorated so much it had to be torn down. The protest for "saving" it consisted almost 100% of architects. Of course, it got demolished. Nobody liked it back when it was new, so even less people were willing to leave its formless husk. The actual panels with bas-reliefs are in a museum, at least. What happened with the space was all sorts of dumb, however. They brought back an old monument that was demolished by the communists... with zero care if it fits in its surroundings. They put it in a circle in the middle of the National Palace of Culture garden, brutalist architecture which is wholly designed around hexagons and octagons. And instead they designated a space in front of the National Gallery (the former palace from before communism) for experimental art. It should have been vice-versa. The pre-communist monument with the pre-communist palace, and the experimental art near the center of experimental artists in Bulgaria.
I was doing some research on some old Brutalism buildings to use as models for the background of a comic I'm working on. Somehow I came across a picture of the Balfron tower and Robin Hood Gardens. I wasn't aware that these buildings were in England...I didn't even know the name of them until I saw this video. I assumed that they were relics of the fall of the Soviet Union.
The term Brutalism is not to do with the looks of the structures. It's something to do with the French term for raw concrete. Although I admit that doesn't sound very tasty...
@@foolsgold6970 actually, it does. early 15c., "of or belonging to animals, non-human," from Old French brut "coarse, brutal, raw, crude," from Latin brutus "heavy, dull, stupid, insensible, unreasonable" it is a loaded term in french. The french word for concrete is unrelated.
Many years ago I served an apprenticeship at the docks in Falmouth. One of the older tradesmen had a saying "In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice they are very, very different.
So this is what happened when they demolished Nonnatus House? 😀 In all seriousness, brutalist buildings are hard to love. I wonder when it was new if it looked shiny and fresh and compared to the cleared slums, a great step in the right direction. The trouble is that these buildings were built out of rubbish materials, maintained on a shoe string, ignored by successive owners of the buildings and fell into their own pool of concrete fatigue and drug dealers... Would it have been a better looking building had it been built in a different era? Would it have still had the same issues? Probably. I’m not sure if it was worth saving or not - it’s pig ugly from any angle but it’s an important piece of architecture by influential architects. Like you, I am undecided.
That was very much the style back then. I recently looked at an appartment from that era and my first impression, when stepping out of the two person coffin, sorry, elevator, was of a corridor in a prison, not a communal hallway for 4 appartments. The appartment itself was nice enough, if in dire need of being brought into the 21st century and unsuited to my furniture, but what spoiled the deal for me was I just couldn't see myself "coming home" to that sight every night. And that's coming from someone who's currently living in a high rise council appartment. Not saying our hallways have much in the way of pleasing aesthetics, but they're A LOT less bleak and uninviting.
I was brought up in a tower block and lived in one for many of my adult years and loved it. However, councils/housing associations tend to neglect them and to fill them with their worst tenants saying that they’re ‘hard to let’. When we first moved in my dad was the caretaker, something else no longer seen, and everyone thought them very modern posh etc. The caretaker kept an eye on things and maintained and cleaned communal areas, every tenant used to keep their bit of corridor clean, as in the old street system. One big flaw though was being unable to let young children play out without supervision in lifts and you lived 10 or 12 floors up you couldn’t keep your eye on them, so families with young children should never have been put in them. The materials they were built with, concrete usually, doesn’t look good for long so they become very shabby looking in no time. These flats look particularly ugly to me though, but the new buildings are still high rise and look no better, so we all go round again...as I said a flat suited me but my children were older, I was older and my dad kept them clean and vandal free but that was in the 1960s. One thing more that is a big problem is they have no gardens, I did miss that.
I would like to ask what does all that talk about council and such means? These were not in private ownership? Maybe that is the problem, buildings where people actually own a flat are mostly well maintained and colorfully painted, even these classic eastern Europe styled districts can be a pleasant places to live
I always think that there should be more common spaces like soft play spaces for young children and computer lab/homework help spaces for older kids also usable for adults job seeking or doing higher education programs. Residents who serve as playground supervisors/computer helpers get a small stipend that doesn't take away from any benefits they might be receiving. A concierge for each building is a great idea to keep packages safe and to keep track of who's coming and going, especially non residents. Also to put in maintenance requests. It'd be great if council flats were desirable enough that providing a flat as part of compensation was attractive to skilled maintenance professionals. If they live in the building they're taking care of they might do a really excellent job and enlist other residents to keep deliberate vandalism down.
@@bethenecampbell6463 that was always a problem, I think it’s cruel to put families with babies & toddlers in a high rise, they can’t just go out & play.
@@tomgirldouble3249 Absolutely it would be ideal if families with young children could have access to a safe play space where kids could just go out in the back garden and parents could watch from the kitchen window. But high density urban spaces need to go vertical. That shouldn't mean that little kids are stuck inside all day, though. I don't know why every other floor couldn't have an open air play space with little slides, climbing frames, ride ons and make believe spots like a play house, grocery store, or ice cream van. And a couple of comfy benches for supervising adults. People who live there need to be willing to watch each other's kids for a few minutes and work together to keep older kids from vandalizing common spaces. How good of an experience people have in any living situation has a lot to do with what they put into making friends and getting involved in the community. There are things that need to be done to help them so they have the time and energy to get involved.
They neglect them because it costs them money, and the councils never suffer any adverse consequences from it no matter how strident the public slaves are.
...and now waiting for the deluge of cottage dwellers blaming perfectly fine buildings for criminality instead of the people that they were filled with I live on a 34th floor of a public housing tower block in Hong Kong and thd only criminality i see around here is the odd granpa smoking in the park downstairs Fine video Jago,as always,thank you from your faithful follower
It is possible for architecture to encourage better or worse states of mind, which can affect mental, and to a lesser but still relevant degree, physical, health. Not enough to cause or prevent such problems of criminality and the like by itself, but still of some relevance. More the final straw than the root cause, if you take my meaning. The surrounding social and economic situation are much more relevant, if course.
@SteelRodent Only the buildings aren't the cause, they're a byproduct of the economic situation themselves as well. You can tell that pretty quickly by the fact they're made as efficiently and tightly packed as possible in order to be as cheap as possible. They were never going to be filled with professional upper middle class people nor are they in the locations that those people desire. You could build giant fake cottage buildings full of flats but looking like they should be in the quiet english countryside. But the fact it's cheap mass housing; with the associated residents, cut corners, poor maintenance and most likely a local area deprived of good economic opportunities, will still win out over the style of the building. Likewise, you can have ugly giant concrete blocks that have insanely expensive and luxurious apartments in them, only you'll find those in the heart of cities rather than in the cheapest plots going.
The Smithsons are high on the ranking of absolute worst architects ever. Their only celebrated work, the school you mentioned, is butt ugly on the outside, and inside it looks like the bastard child of a basement and a corrugated iron storage shack. Every time one of their buildings are taken down, the world should celebrate. And I say this as a staunch supporter of modernism and functionalism.
The first giveaway is in the style name: Brutal-ism. I prefer Bomb-Shelter-ism. Or, "I can give a good deal on 4000 tons of concrete I can't shift, plus a little something for your holiday fund."
@@valvlog4665 Except that the name comes from the French "brut" ("raw or in its natural state"), not the English "brutal". It refers to the undecorated concrete. Possibly the worst choice of name ever. I mean, it's one thing for us to be all saying "Your building looks like crap" but if you call your style "Soundslikeitlookslikecrapism", you are just asking for it.
@@beeble2003 Like me, vast numbers of people would not know the etymology and take it on face as the English meaning, which visually appears to fit the style.
Can´t remember were i read it. But an urban planer in my country, when asked about large housing estates and why they almost inevitable fail, answered the following: "You can stack rich people but not poor people"
I love this! I read a really good article (which obviously now I can't find) about the brutalist school of architecture and how the majority of architects designing these sorts of buildings actually lived in quaint Tudor cottages and lovely semi detached villas. They wanted to design these buildings, but they didn't want to live in them, and I think that's hugely telling. There's also something uncomfortable about the way a tower block squeezes poorer people in one big box, stacking them all up, out of the way.
I grew up on the Barbican Estate, an adorable space to come of age, work, rest and play - but this is hideous! BTW I'm falling in love with your voice and presentation style ♥️🏆
@@gewizz2 And who would you kill to solve overpopulation? Who would you forcibly sterilize? China tried to fix overpopulation and it didn't work. Instead, we must respect human life and recognize that humans have always reproduced more than was needed to maintain any given population level and barring a mass extinction human populations must be expected to increase. Therefore governments must plan for that. The colonization of space must be a distant goal, but allowing even impoverished people adequate space and facilities must be the immediate rule.
@@playwithmeinsecondlife6129 i hear you charles, and what you say makes sense, but i am more inclined to favour nature, trees, animals, etc, humans to me are a terrible thing, so many of them, most of them unsightly fat pigs, with pig minds too, humans are a disgraice,
I worked as.a trainee psychiatrist in Tower Hamlets in the 1970s. Specifically, I spent the best part of a year roaming the streets of Poplar and its adjacent conurbations, doing domiciliary visits. By then, most locals had been relocated east in the near-reaches of Essex(also to become urban wastelands). Those who qualified to remain in Poplar most notably included the least adaptable to the concrete jungle. These were the descendants of those who not so very long ago had enjoyed the squalid equivalent in village life, That is, generations of residents inherited new modalities of squalor. Your presentation was excellent because it gave a glimpse of the bungling back story of just one of the failed attempts at East London urban planning. Without having checked I would hazard a guess that no one Councillor, not one architect had ever spent more than an hour on the ground in their target locations, They never experienced the weariness of climbing the steps in endless tower blocks whose lifts had long been abandoned. Not once would they have enjoyed the stench of mostly urine as they might have cruised the stairs and stairwells. Remarkably, here and there in the midst of this disgrace, stood the occasional single house, or terrace of houses. These were in no better state of repair than their hugely ugly concrete confreres. And the people? Nobody ever gave them even a moment’s thought. That’s another story, and this is not the place tp tell it.
"Let's create a new style we will call Brutalism, then fill it with the dregs of society and see what the phycologists make of it, should be a good wheeze". "OH LORD, they took our joke seriously and built it, theres our reputation shot to pieces"
It was designed to be a solution to the post-post-war housing shortage and wasn't full of the 'dregs of society' when it was first occupied. Sink estates happen with neglect.
"Brutalism" comes from the French "brut", meaning "in its raw or natural state", not the English "brutal". It refers to the buildings being made of naked concrete rather than covered in decorative elements. It wasn't the architects who decided who'd live there, but their clients, the city councils. I don't like brutalist buildings, either -- at least, not in northern Europe, since any concrete looks pretty awful when it's damp and under a grey sky -- but your description of their architects isn't really fair.
@@eattherich9215 sink estates are created by councils putting the dregs in one, if only there were only enough for one, place.🤔 Fill a tower block or one of these monoliths with the cream and the situation would be different. To say estates create the dregs, sorry must try to be PC disadvantaged hoodlums, is very simplistic. Good manners create contentment whatever the situation. Fill the Ritz with the drags, sorry again hoodlums, and see what happens. Having said the above, with tongue very slightly in cheek, even I might start to be depressed by living in one of these monstrosities .
@@beeble2003 the road to perdition is paved with good intentions. Architects should trained out of having an ego before they are given their first pencil. Architects should design to please the viewer, ie general public, not a tiny cohort of fellow delinquents and vandals .
@@chrisstephens6673 Anyone who wants to design large buildings is going to have an ego. The architects in this case _were_ trying to please the people who lived in these buildings: they were aware of the failings of tower blocks and were trying to make something better. They failed utterly, but they were trying to do the right thing. It's silly to pretend that architecture is just some self-centred conspiracy against the common man.
I do take fault with this idea that every building should be 'ignorable' - fit into the context so much that you don't even notice it - because otherwise how will architecture progress? The style of little flint cottages are completely unsuitable for a learning environment which needs lots of light & space ect...
@@SDSen It's a pleonasm (the use of unnecessary words). Everything we think, say, or do, we do personally. If you ran a hundred yards, you ran it yourself (personally). If you think Taylor Swift is a good singer, you yourself (personally) think Swift is a good singer. So, saying "I personally" is redundant. . . Avoid using "personally" with other pronouns, especially with "I". For example: "Personally, no one should be able to break the law without facing punishment". In this example, as you can see there is no need to use the pronoun "I". Clearly, it is the speaker who feels a certain way about law breaking. . . I hope this helps.
@@7ebr830 ok, its just that in class we were taught It is reflexive and in most cases tautological. It would probably serve to add nothing more than emphasis to a sentence and no semantical difference
@@SDSen You were taught well. "Personally" _is_ reflexive and, as I pointed out, redundant. I didn't use the word "tautology" because I am somewhat pedantic, but if you take with you the idea that using "personally" is repetition without benefit, then you're winning. 🙂
I turned up on a site one day and asked the first lad I saw if there was architect there, he said "yeah, howdya know that?". I pointed at the classic maroon Saab parked outside. The beauty of stereotypes is that they're often pretty accurate.
I studied this estate quite extensively during my Masters thesis. I went into it thinking “what an injustice to knock down an iconic piece of architecture” and came out agreeing with Historic England - it failed as an estate and was only championed by architects who didn’t live there. The element which Jago doesn’t touch on so much is that it’s actually comparatively low density and next to high value Canary Wharf and the DLR route right into Bank, and this is why they were so keen to redevelop. Whether the new housing will be better than the old is debatable, it’s less interesting for sure. The usual gentrification debate goes on; the new residents will not be the same group of people who used to live in RHG. The site is too valuable for that...
Another feature/bug which doomed RHG was that the private balconies, on the greens-facing side, are absurdly narrow, so narrow that they're completely useless for anything aside from fire escapes... or clothes drying lines (posh twats are clutching their pearls). You can't place even a small bistro table on them, let alone a chaise lounge or other patio furniture. Ridiculous.
This was great, and very thoughtful. I'll only add that as monstrously ugly as this building is, I'm not sure bulldozing housing regular people can afford and replacing it with housing that they mostly cannot is a huge improvement. Once again, and I will not tire of telling you, I love your thoughtful explorations into bits of microhistory that would otherwise be forgotten about. Cheers!
Since you ask... I think it's as dreary as my own Northwestern Washington state. I mean the architecture and the general environment both. Your videos are absolutely amazing. Thank you!
Actually it's associated with the phrase "Béton brut" meaning "Raw Concrete." With a(n over) focus on form created from concrete poured in place and adopting the textures and patterns of whatever it was poured into. Much of it was infused with the post war optimism that we could reengineer society through reengineering our urban form, but with precious little focus on how these places would work as homes, offices and cultural spaces in the long term
I really like your scientific approach to those buildings looking at them out of different angles and sum it up with a quiet ironic conclusion. Cool video and thx from Germany :)
This was very interesting. I lived in London many years ago and would love to see more pieces like this on its architectural landscape. Keep up the good work.
To the point of architects not having to live in these places: Ernö Goldfinger lived in Balfron Tower for a short time, but of course it was new then and he knew he didn’t have to stay
@@ericpode6095 The 007 villain was actually named after the architect when Fleming became miffed at an eyesore building that Goldfinger had erected near the writer's home.
@@cargy930 Yes - Fleming was a strong opponent of 2 Willow Way Erno Goldfingers development of 3 homes overlooking Hampstead Heath. An experimental terrace of modernist homes built on land purchased from Camden Council. Fleming though the designs were an eyesore and would ruin Hampstead, they're rather nice and now one is owned by the National trust - well worth a visit!
@@VictorSneller It's nothing to do with minimum wage, it's supply and demand and if the poor have 5x what they have now, so will the rich, ie hyper inflation. The only solution is to build up or out. Nobody DESERVES anything if you wan't nice, work for it. That said If the UK keeps importing people who will become competition for space they should think about abolishing green belts.
I was lucky to come across the Robin Hood Gardens estate on one of my walks. I sneaked inside and upstairs the moment someone got out of the front door and had a good look along the corridors, at the views, as well as the garden. I remember residents telling me they were happy to be there. One of the buildings was boarded up but I had no idea they were about to demolish the lot. The new buildings are even worse and I bet the green space has been reduced, for example they're built right on the pavement.
@@ajs41 Totally agree. They have all these ideas on how the 'common people' should live, but I bet they wouldn't live in something like that in a million years. Cities across the world are blighted with these ego-driven abominations.
It is a soviet ideal really- the concept is that difference and aesthetics were corruptions of the soul so to speak - this architecture sings equity. Distractions from achieving the utopian ideal. Centralised planning essentially. While you can find many socialists that hate it, you won't find brutalist fans who aren't radical socialists- at least in my experience- and the kind that don't believe in human nature to some degree.
It sure can be confusing to navigate. I sublet a flat in Kiev one summer 20 years ago in a part of town where there are three identical groups of concrete apartment blocks in a row, and more than once I miscounted on my way back from the Metro stop and walked up to the wrong apartment door. Fortunately the residents had all personalized their doors, and so I realized my mistake before getting the key stuck in the lock! The flats were decent inside, but the exterior was so bleak.
