Robin Hood Gardens Film Screening

A utopian idea for modern living is demolished, and the documentary Robin Hood Gardens searches the rubble for visions of a bygone era and the reasons for its failure.

Robin Hood Gardens, the brutalist council estate in East London, was unloved by its first residents in 1972, and was lauded and loathed in equal measure by internationally renowned architects, critics and social commentators. The British architects Alison & Peter Smithson failed with their grand, utopian vision for better living, but what is really behind the ostracised facade?

With the participation of residents, experts and critics, and collaborations with Harvard University, the V&A and the Venice Biennale, Robin Hood Gardens paints a polychromatic portrait of this building complex, reappraising the intentions behind it and the backlash against it, in search of answers about the failing of modernism.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with co-directors Thomas Beyer and Adrian Dorschner, chaired by Urban Lab Director, Prof Clare Melhuish. Dr Pablo Sendra, Lecturer in Global Urbanism, will also speak on the panel.

Presented as a partnership between UCL Urban Laboratory and Bertha DocHouse.