English heritage won't protect "bleak" robin hood gardens
ROBIN Hood Gardens has moved one step closer to demolition after English Heritage chose not to call for the listing of the Poplar estate.
The conservation group has decided not to recommend special status for the 1970s block, describing it as "neither innovative nor influential" and claiming it "fails as a place for human beings to live".
As the statutory adviser to the government, English Heritage's view will have a significant bearing on the culture minister Margaret Hodge's final decision at the end of June. If Robin Hood Gardens is not listed, it will be demolished to make way for up to 3,000 new homes as part of the Blackwall Reach development.
In a scathing statement released this week, English Heritage slammed the estate's "bleak entrance lobbies, prison-like boundary wall, the too few, narrow, twisting stairwells and the inadequate access to the long decks and people’s front doors".
It also rejected claims from a group of 1,500 petitioners led by architectural digest Building Design - including renowned architect Lord Richard Rogers - that it should be retained as an example of the brutalist architecture of Alison and Peter Smithson.
It said: “Listing decisions must be robust, objective and free from campaign pressure – however passionate and sincere. In our view, love it or loathe it, this one does not make the grade.�
Blackwall and Cubitt Town councillor Peter Golds has called the decision "a victory for local people", but Building Design has already dismissed it as "extraordinary". The Department of Culture, Media and Sport will hear comments from the public on the future of the estate until May 30.
For more details and reaction, see next week's Wharf on Thursday May 22.
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