Robin Hood Gardens

About

Robin Hood Gardens was a residential estate in Poplar, London, designed in the late 1960s by architects Alison and Peter Smithson and completed in 1972. It was built as a council housing estate with homes spread across 'streets in the sky': social housing characterised by broad aerial walkways in long concrete blocks, much like the Park Hill estate in Sheffield; it was informed by, and a reaction against, Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation. The estate was built by the Greater London Council, but subsequently the London Borough of Tower Hamlets became the landlord.

The scheme, the first major housing scheme designed by the Smithsons, consisted of two blocks, one of ten and one of seven storeys, nurturing between them a large green; it embodied ideas first published in their failed attempt to win the contract to build the Golden Lane Estate in the City of London.