Thaddeus Zupančič is the author of London Estates (Fuel, 2024) and documents his passion for mid century buildings on his Instagram @notreallyobsessive

This photographic exhibition documents Robin Hood Gardens by Alison + Peter Smithson which was designed for the Greater London Council between 1966 to 1970, completed in 1972 and demolished by 2025.


Zupančič records his first visit and personal experience of Robin Hood Gardens 

I first visited Robin Hood Gardens in 1992. A colleague was subletting – “informally,” as he put it – his grandmother’s flat, and we took full advantage of its remoteness, spending much of our time partying; it was truly one of the best summers ever. While my colleague soon moved away, I kept returning to the estate and eventually joined the Twentieth Century Society, which — together with Building Design — campaigned for the listing and retention of Robin Hood Gardens, describing it as an “outstandingly important” estate.

Robin Hood Gardens was commissioned in 1963 by the London County Council from the celebrated architects Alison and Peter Smithson. It was their only built social housing estate. The first scheme, known as Manisty Street, was already well developed when the LCC’s successor, the Greater London Council, decided in 1965 to demolish the nearby Grosvenor Buildings – a block of “model dwellings” built in 1892 – to create a more coherent site. The Smithsons redrew and redesigned their original scheme, which remained unapologetically brutalist.

The site, on the edge of Poplar in the borough of Tower Hamlets – sandwiched between the northern entrance to the Blackwall Tunnel to the east and a busy dual carriageway to the west, with further major roads not far to the north and south – was as unenviable as they come. The design of the precast concrete slab blocks — 1–104 (Cotton Street) and 105–214 (Blackwall Tunnel South) — attempted to address several challenges, particularly traffic noise and pollution. The elevations facing the central courtyard, renamed Millennium Green in 1999, were very quiet, especially in comparison with the access balconies — or decks, as the Smithsons insisted — on the outer elevations. “On the outside, we put noisy next to the noisy,” explained Peter Smithson in The Smithsons on Housing (BBC2, 10 July 1970).

The estate’s austere design had to be further adapted following the partial collapse of Ronan Point in the neighbouring London borough of Newham in 1968.

The scheme was built by Walter Lawrence and Son Limited between 1968 and 1972, at a cost of £1,845,585 (around £32 million today). It comprised 214 flats for 698 people (with a proposed density of 142 persons per acre, or 350 per hectare). Except for the ground-floor flats (intended for elderly residents), the dwellings were mostly large three- and four-bedroom maisonettes, all complying with the Parker Morris space standards then required for public housing. The flats were spacious and well lit, offering through-ventilation and dual aspect.

Most importantly, they were homes.

But the estate was badly maintained.

Tower Hamlets Council, the successor landlord to the GLC, voted for demolition in 2008. It claimed that over 75 per cent of residents supported the decision, although this was disputed. Residents did want better housing conditions, as John Boughton has pointed out, but their dissatisfaction focused on poor upkeep and overcrowding — neither of which can be blamed on the estate’s design.

In the same year, the then minister for heritage at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Margaret Hodge, following advice from English Heritage, turned down the initial request to list the estate. C20 requested a review of this decision; although the request was accepted by DCMS, listing was again rejected in May 2009 by Hodge’s successor, Barbara Follett.

Largely due to the support of Building Design, the story of Robin Hood Gardens and its listing campaign remained alive. It was also backed by a number of prominent architects, including Zaha Hadid — who described Robin Hood Gardens as “among the best strong late modernist projects” in London — and Richard Rogers, who rhapsodised that “the three-storey mullions — large and small — the windows, the terraces and the ‘streets in the air’ give the building a magical quality.” (Both quotes are from Robin Hood Gardens Re-Visions, The Twentieth Century Society, 2010.)

In 2013, I moved to Bromley-by-Bow, a few kilometres up the A12 from Robin Hood Gardens and the nearby Balfron Tower (then my second-favourite building in London). When I began posting on Instagram a few years later, both featured so often that a friend suggested renaming my profile RobinHoodGardensDaily. Perhaps I should have done.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Thaddeus Zupančič