A nine-metre-high section of the facade of the brutalist Robin Hood Gardens housing estate by the late Alison and Peter Smithson, supported by scaffolding and silhouetted against the Venetian sky, is a mute testament to the architects’ utopian ideals. Designed in the late 1960s and completed in 1972, they regarded it as “a demonstration of a more enjoyable way of living … It is a model, an exemplar, of a new mode of urban organization,” as Peter said in a 1970 BBC documentary.
Indebted to Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation (Marseille, 1952), the estate features two eight-storey curved blocks that provide housing for 250 families with each flat overlooking a central park. The wide, high-level access decks, described as “streets in the sky,” were intended to foster community spirit. But disillusionment…