Screening | Robin Hood Gardens

This event will be conducted in-person in room 315F. Registration is required.

Join us at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture for a screening of Robin Hood Gardens, a documentary exploring the rise and fall of a brutalist housing complex in East London, uncovering the visionary yet ultimately failed ideals of modernism, and examining its enduring lessons for the future of urban living.

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 from the beginning in 1972 until today when the building is lying in ruins and the debris has been shipped to the Venice Biennale. This film is about the intentions and the failing of a brutalist housing complex in East London and a search for answers about the failing of modernism.

Robin Hood Gardens, a council estate unloved by its first residents in 1972, was hated and loved by internationally renowned critics and decades later earmarked for demolition. The British architects Alison & Peter Smithson failed with their vision, but what is really behind the ostracized facade? The documentary ventures a second look at the construction. Can't we still learn something from the design to improve living in the city of tomorrow?

Exclusive collaborations with Harvard University, London’s V&A, the Venice Biennale, and of course, with the participation of residents, experts, and critics, this documentary is painting a polychromatic portrait of this building complex, and a story develops that goes way beyond the mere topics of “design”. This filmic investigation takes the viewer to issues such as social housing, urban participation, sustainability challenges and cultural contradictions of preservation.

This event is free and open to the public.

Host or Publisher WNYC and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art