Deconstructed: Robin Hood Gardens - Brutalism and Demolition

In this episode, Matthew Lloyd Roberts was joined by Sam Elbahja to discuss a vanished building with a complicated history. Robin Hood Gardens was a housing estate in Poplar, designed by Alison and Peter Smithson for the LCC, completed in 1972. It was the first opportunity that the Smithsons had to enact their long-developed ideas about modern residential planning, including 'streets in the sky', a principle for community design grounded in the sociological patterns of kinship in the East End. The building was controversial from the outset, and in 2010, Tower Hamlets Borough Council decided to demolish and redevelop the estate. In 2025, the demolition of the estate was completed, and the V&A Storehouse opened in nearby Hackney Wick, featuring a fragment of the facade of the building as part of their collection.

Sam Elbahja is a Moroccan-Thai poet and artist from East London, and a recent Architecture graduate from the University of Cambridge. Sam is an Eden’s Scholar and recipient of the Cambridge David Flemming Prize, she is also a four-time published poet, with work featured by the V&A, Chicago’s Trope, and in her debut collection Naked Pen. Sam’s greatest passion lies in community engagement and exploring the intersectionality of architecture, poetry, and art - recently co-founding an interdisciplinary collective called ISO. 

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