Broken windows
Reflecting on BY ORDER: a study of the British ‘sink estate’ and what’s changing (or changed) in social housing.
Written by Craig Berry
Designer & Writer
Five years ago, in January 2016, David Cameron, the then Prime Minister of the UK, vowed to “ blitz” up to 100 of the UK’s worst “sink estates”. Promising to tackle drug abuse, gang culture and the housing crisis across the UK by removing “brutal high-rise towers” and “bleak” housing, either through redeveloping these areas or just getting rid of them. This act, he labelled “an all-out assault on poverty and disadvantage.”
Cameron highlighted the criminality that was allowed the flourish as a result of the design of some estates, describing them as “a gift to criminals and drug dealers.”
Inspired by Cameron’s words, my collaborative partner at university and I, Ben Rimmer, chose to use this topic for our major graphic design project and more specifically, to build a creative response and research inquiry into the iconic British ‘sink estate’ as well as looking at high-rise, social housing in general. Concentrating on the social, political and cultural relevance ingrained within these settings through their history, present and uncertain future and compiling our findings through our designed publication: BY ORDER.
This project was carried out through April and May 2016 and I wanted to take this fifth anniversary of it to reflect on what’s happened (and what hasn’t happened) since then.
In five years, a lot can change. But has it? You might think that by now the government would well and truly be on their way with their mission of removing these ‘blots’ from the map. One by one, sending the bulldozers in and destroying these homes; a huge act of social cleansing. And they are… Kind of.
Iconic estates like the Robin Hood Gardens Estate in Poplar and the larger Thamesmead Estate area (both mid-twentieth century, concrete-heavy, council estates) have had regeneration plans drawn up and are in various levels of being executed. These plans aim to remove social housing to create private and “affordable” housing, turning what were once low-income areas into “mixed-income” areas, in some kind of utopian vision where poor and rich people live side by side.
In reality, this “affordable” housing is generally unaffordable for most ex-council tenants and is usually managed by a housing association that offers less protection against possession claims. As well as this disregard for ex-tenants, both the plans by Swan Group for Robin Hood Gardens and Peabody for Thamesmead pay no attention to the cultural relevance or historical significance of these respective estates and are just the latest pieces in the movement of lazy 21st-century architecture and design; boring cookie-cutter housing with plans full of empty promises.
To give context with these examples, Robin Hood Gardens in East London was built in 1972 and was the first major housing scheme by Alison and Peter Smithson and featured a radical design of streets in the sky characterised by wide aerial walkways in long concrete blocks as opposed to the fixed rectilinear grid as was normal for modernist building (similar to Park Hill Flats in Sheffield). Despite numerous attempts from The Twentieth Century Society (C20), Richard Rogers and the late Zaha Hadid, to have the estate listed and protected, they ultimately failed and it became part of Swan Group’s Blackwall Reach regeneration project.
Interestingly, however, a campaign to save the estate drew very little support from the estate’s residents, with more than 75% supporting its demolition. Whereas a resident’s survey later found 80% really just wanted it refurbished. I can’t speak from experience with this but I am not sure if residents in these places choose to live/stay in estates like this because of their architectural significance or rather their own financial situation or just the location. While the future demolition of the estate was decided in 2012, it wasn’t until 2017 that the demolition began.
Prior to this demolition, however, the V&A Museum acquired a three-storey section of the estate reaching almost 9m tall and 5.5m wide representing a full section of the repeating pattern of prefabricated parts that form the buildings’ faces. Original fittings, including cabinetry that forms some of the interior walls, are also included. The section was presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018.
The fact that the building was loathed by the residents and loved by architecture enthusiasts opens an interesting debate about the fetishisation of social-housing estates. Robin Hood Gardens itself being used as a key example in this article from the Royal Academy of Arts on this subject.
It also questions the idea of ‘architecture for architects’ which is the idea that architects design buildings to satisfy their own architectural desires as opposed to actually building what people want and need to live happily.
In my opinion—admittedly biased and skewed from the perspective of being an architecture enthusiast and not a resident—Robin Hood Gardens could of been saved through refurbishment instead of redevelopment. Popular estates like Trellick Tower and the Alexandra & Ainsworth Estate in West London, Instagram accounts like This Brutal House and letting agencies like Modernist Estates show that there is a real demand for mid-twentieth century modernist housing and that they can work as mixed social and private housing.
The other estate I’ve mentioned so far is the Thamesmead estate in South East London. Built by Greater London Council and designed by Robert Rigg, it sounds like a familiar story. In the 1960s town planners and politicians decided to build an ambitious utopian estate through concrete and high-rise towers: “a town for the 21st century” which at first is loved by the new working-class residents compared to what they used to have with central heating and indoor bathrooms: “full of potential, they were a blank canvas for individuals to make their own mark on — a fresh new start, typifying the era of social mobility from which Brutalism sprung.”
But soon after, they begin to loathe it as local authorities stop taking care of the buildings, transport links are poor and general tolerance of the estate disappears. Design problems such as pollution from two nearby power stations limited the height of the estate’s towers, not allowing the full design of the estate to be realised.
People move out and rent prices lower, “problem” tenants move in and as the estate falls apart more and more—physically and metaphorically—public opinion goes down with it. It becomes just another “sink estate”. Despite numerous promotional films designed to showcase its desirability, the image known to most is that of Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 A Clockwork Orange, the estate being the backdrop to a dark and dystopian story surrounding realities of violence, punishment and power of the state; the story eventually becoming the truth. The film probably didn’t help public opinion though as it became one of the UK’s most notorious housing estates.
“In their statement, Peabody has revealed how their project is still haunted by Kubrick’s film. As Pauline Ford, interim executive director of Thamesmead, stated: “The perceptions formed by A Clockwork Orange are just wrong, but we know we need to spend a great deal of money on good design.”
Excerpt from Failed Architecture: Ultraviolence in Representation.
(read more about concrete, brutalist architecture in popular culture in the below blog post link).
Currently under redevelopment by Peabody, with what looks like a very boring and conservative design, perhaps there is room though to make something work? Peabody housing association has owned most of Thamesmead’s area since 2014 and they have planned to double the number of homes and to lay down a new town where the old one sits.
It’s a difficult task however as Thamesmead is not in an attractive area of London; it has no down the road is Belmarsh high security prison and Crossness sewage treatment works, no TfL and no train station (although a DLR station may be coming soon). It does however have more green space per inhabitant than anywhere else in London along with lakes and marshes; it has potential to work.
And Peabody does seem to be committed to making work; inviting artists to occupy studios, a “landscape activation manager” has been appointed to encourage people to make use of the parks. They are encouraging voluntary forums, supporting businesses and helping people develop skills so locals can become more prosperous. A “place manual” will describe a brigher future of dredged lakes, cycle lanes, sustainable drainage and cultural programs. Peabody is acting as a local government due to the amount of territory they hold; they can afford to take the long view.
Perhaps Peabody’s Thamesmead redevelopment will work and turn the area into the utopian ideal it was originally intended. Regardless the new design doesn’t pay any attention to the existing architecture style; gone are the concrete tower blocks and concrete ziggurat houses. Perhaps for the better, but from an architectural heritage angle; it’s another brutalist estate wiped off the map, replaced by a bland cookie-cutter style.
Both of these developments at Robin Hood Gardens and Thamesmead focus mainly on high-rise housing; the medium of choice to “solve” London’s housing shortage crisis. But incidents like the 2017 Grenfell disaster, and subsequent other high-rise fire incidents, show that high-rise solutions are not necessarily the way forward. High-rise housing solutions are a way to charge more for the amount of land in which they sit; put simply, its cheaper to build up, and you can fit more people in = more money for these building’s owners.
It’s an act of “value stripping” and cost-cutting which has seen sound designs undermined for the sake of profit maximisation.
“This terrible event may prove to be the shock that finally forces commissioning public clients and the construction industry to take design quality and specification seriously. “Value engineering, and the culture of value stripping, needs to be removed from the British lexicon and replaced by careful and considered design and robust quality building methods.”
Paul Karakusevic on the Grenfell disaster and UK housing solutions.
Part of our BY ORDER project was looking at the rise of high-rise social housing; looking at why we started to build up as opposed to the previous method of mass housing in inner cities: terraced housing. This is what a social-housing project in Norwich: Goldsmith Street, by Mikhail Riches, has chosen to revert back to as an option but also focusing on sustainability through the concept of a Passivhaus: a voluntary standard for energy efficiency in a building.
(read more about this project and other design’s of the year in the below blog post link).
Not only is it safer and sustainable, it brings a sense of community that lacks in high-rise housing. The original mid 20th century concept of “streets in the sky” is dead; it’s not possible for architects to dictate the way people live and expect them to just “do as they’re told”. Instead Mikhail Riches’ design allows for regular neighbour interactions, it priorities pedestrians over cars. It has a shared alleyway, only accessible by residents to create secure spaces for children. Is returning to low-rise, terraced housing going to be the future? As much as I like this project conceptually and visually; can local councils afford to do this on a mass scale? It speaks volumes that this project is not in London but rather a smaller city. Across villages, towns and cities we see new-build estates popping up, taking away green-spaces for even more cookie-cutter “architecture”.
Alas, architecture for housing is difficult on design and societal levels. Architects, planners and, sadly, politicians draw up sketches and designs to be debated by people who will never live there. It’s also hard because they’re designing long-term and for the future, as has been the case with previous housing solutions; you don’t know if something is working for several years after it’s finished and by then, it’s probably too late to do something about it. Do you tear it down and start again?
Or do you try to redevelop and adapt? A few years ago I looked at Robin Hood Gardens and compared it to an award-winning example in Amsterdam, De Flat Kleiburg, which has been a (supposedly) successful and highly awarded redevelopment project; essentially gutting a block of flats and allowing residents to decide how their apartment looks from structural and aesthetic stances.
(read more in the below blog post link).
To conclude, in five years not much has necessarily changed. As you would expect, old houses are being destroyed and new ones are being built, either in their existing plots or new ones. In the grand scheme, five years is nothing and it will probably take another 25 years before we begin to see something happen that is obviously more visible. For now though in the UK we are left with endless building sites and an endless housing shortage. Perhaps a new government would change things? I’d like to think so, but I doubt it.
(read more about alternative housing projects in the below blog post link).
Read more blog posts on craig-berry.co.uk or my Medium page.
