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Re Robin Hood Gardens listing; Well done English Heritage! The campaign to list Robin Hood Gardens is a perfect illustration of how sections of the architectural profession in our country are so far divorced from the aspirations of working class Tenants who are forced to live in these failed estates. The Smithsons were certainly failed architects as far as social housing goes. They built theri reputation on an innovative school in Hunstanton but they were fortunately never given another social housing brief after their streets in the sky disaster at Robin Hood Gardens. Robin Hood Gardens belongs to that all too familiar group of architectural carbunkles that were designed to encourage anti social behaviour behaviour. It is a development carefully designed to maximise the opportunities for muggers. I would compare it in that respect with the Andover Estate in Finsbury Park and Copley Close Estate in Hanwell Ealing. The campaign to list iRobin Hood Gardens is motivated by the precious vanity of the Smithsons son more than anything else. The people arguing for its retention do not live there but appear to want to condemn less well off Tenants to have to remain living there. Tower Hamlets and their Tenants and Margaret Hodge are right to want it pulled down but what people should be concentrating on is the mega density monstrosity that is being planned to go in its place. That is the real issue here. I have no doubt that if the Tenants were offerred a terraced housing replacement development there would be unanimous support. But of course that rarely happens anymore. The decision makers who live in houses themselves have decided that less well of people have to be rehoused in high density flats again just like in the sixties. I do not subscribe to the oftexpressed notion that if the Council remove the existing very multi-cultural Tenants at Robin Hood Gardens and have the building refurbished and sold off to young white professional achitects and fans of the Smithsons that this would represent a solution. Take the case of Keeling House in Bethnell Green, sometimes used as an argument to preserve tower blocks. This Denys Lansdun designed building was emptied by the Council and sold off to the private sector to be refurbished and sold on to private owners. The fact that a famous architect had originally designed the building did not neccessarily help the flats get sold. A huge amount of money had to be spent advertising the flats which took some years to get sold. Today iKeeling House looks grubby again despite its gating off from the local community. Be interesting to see what happens there in time as the original Council condition survey report at the time of the emptying of Tenants spoke of the inherent problem of "crumbling concrete". That inherent problem does not go away just because it is now in private ownership.

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