Robin Hood Gardens

Robin Hood Gardens is 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 landlord is Tower Hamlets Council. As with many other council housing blocks in the UK, tenures have diversified somewhat and include social housing tenants, leaseholders who exercised the right to buy and subsequent private owners, and private tenants of leaseholders. The estate comprises two long curved blocks facing each other across a central green space, and in total covers 1.5 hectares (3.7 acres). The blocks are of ten and seven storeys, built from precast concrete slabs and contain 213 flats. In the central green area is a small man-made hill. The flats themselves are a mixture of single-storey apartments and two-storey maisonettes, with wide balconies (the 'streets') on every third floor. The complex is 200m north of Blackwall DLR station, with its direct links to the City of London and separated by a bus terminus. It is within sight of the nearby Balfron Tower; both are highly visible examples of Brutalist architecture.

A redevelopment scheme, involving the demolition of Robin Hood Gardens as part of a wider local regeneration project, was approved in 2012; however, as of March 2016 the estate was still intact and many flats were still occupied. An earlier attempt, supported by a number of notable architects, to head off redevelopment by getting the estate listed status, was rejected by the government in 2009.

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