Context 156 - September 2018

C O N T E X T 1 5 6 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 8 5 with scaffolding and plywood, is somewhat underwhelming. Compared to the massive sculptural scale and social ambition of Peter and Alison Smithson’s original design, it looks skeletal and lost against the blue Venetian skies. The accompanying display, though, is excellent in documenting and interpreting the story of Robin Hood Gardens: its architectural concept and realisation; its decline due to a long-running lack of investment by the Tower Hamlets Council; and now its redevelopment, despite the Twentieth Century Society’s fruitless campaign for listing the building, backed by esteemed architects including Richard Rogers and Zaha Hadid. Even if most post-war housing estates are not of sufficiently high quality to meet the criteria for listing, is demolishing them the best way forward? The exhibition by Parisian practice Lacaton and Vassal demonstrates an alternative strategy through their projects to retrofit French tower blocks by extending them outwards, providing additional rooms and an insulated shell. Recognising the generous space standards and egalitarian ideals of post-war housing estates, they argue that ‘1960s and 1970s buildings are not failures of history’. Although the Grenfell Tower tragedy has highlighted the danger of cutting costs while retrofitting, Lacaton and Vassal’s work shows that significant improvements can be carried out to a high standard while still being much cheaper than demolishing and rebuilding, and with a far lower environmental impact. Furthermore, these large, robust modern buildings can withstand relatively radical change, if carefully designed and in the spirit of the principles of the original building. It seems that Robin Hood Gardens’ reputation as a sink estate carried more weight for the decision of whether to demolish or retrofit than purely architectural or sustainable considerations. There is a compelling case for the provision of more and better housing on such sites. But the default position should be to explore the retention, refurbishment and extension of existing buildings, alongside new development in their usually generous open settings. The current situation seems to be that demolition is avoided only when listing forces the local authority’s hand to consider other options. Retaining and working with those post-war estate buildings that are of good quality, but not listed or listable, would be beneficial in both an environmental and historical sense. The embodied carbon would be preserved, and so would a sense of the historical evolution and character of the place. Rather than erasing our post- war estates, and retaining fragments as museum pieces, we should be celebrating and adapting them. The Venice Architecture Biennale closes on 25 November. Tom Brooks, senior heritage consultant, Iceni Projects John Betjeman writing in the Daily Telegraph, 1958 Country houses are part of the English landscape. Georgian and Victorian squires planted the woods around them which we enjoy to-day. Yet the complete village, with its big house still in good repair and lived in by the family which built it; its church served by its own vicar, its cottages, new and old, built of local material and inhabited – such a complete unit is now almost unknown. But how well one knows the feel of the presence of a big house – the planted woods which adorn the hills, the high park wall, the lodges and gates, the avenues sweeping away to hidden private splendour, the lake, the fishponds, the ice-house, the sheltered kitchen garden, the folly on the hill, the stable clock chiming over the yard a full five minutes ahead of the church clock in the village, the hunters in the paddock, the estate cottages deep in their well-worked gardens of fruit and vegetables and flowers, the neatly ordered farms and snug stack-yards, the family arms on hatchments in the church and swinging on a sign over the village inn. To-day the woods are down, ruined Army huts deface the park, the gates are sold, the park wall has fallen, the church is locked. The village is strung with poles and wires, and most of it has been rebuilt to look as much like Slough as possible, the kitchen garden has been ploughed, the folly has disappeared, demolishers have bought all the chimney pieces and panelling of the old house and these, like its pictures and furniture, have either been sold to America or gone to adorn the board rooms of investment trusts. And you and I are labelled Tories for not regarding this as progress. Construction and restoration work is complete at Spanish City, a dining-and-leisure centre in Whitley Bay, North Tyneside. North Tyneside Council secured grants of £3.47 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund and more than £2 million from the Coastal Communities Fund. Construction company Robertson led the renovation works, with architects ADP, using historical images and drawings as reference where original details had been lost. The Grade II listed structure was built in 1910. (Photo: Andrew Heptinstall)