The Robin Hood Gardens Estate and Balfron Tower are two of the best known examples of Brutalist housing in east London. Designed in the 1960’s to offer radical solutions to housing needs, the estates now are facing very different futures. Erno Goldfinger’s Balfron Tower is being refurbished whereas Robin Hood Gardens by Alison and Peter Smithson is undergoing demolition despite a high profile campaign over many years to list the building.
In easy walking distance of each other, this tour will examine the locations, architecture and utopian ambitions of these two great social housing projects and discuss how and why their futures have diverged so strikingly.
