Transcript
Voice over: "Throughout history, different architectural movements have come, gone and re-emerged. But one 20th century movement is perhaps the most contentious of them all. This style of building is simultaneously one of the most loved and hated of all time."
Rosamund Lily West, lecturer in architectural studies, Manchester school of architecture: " This wasn't ever meant to be this cruel, brutal architecture imposed on poor people. It was never like that. That's not what the intention was and that's not what it was either."
Voice over: "Brutalism, when it first emerged, was a modern and optimistic style, largely praised and appreciated by the public. But today, many of these buildings are seen as ugly, and associated with crime and antisocial behaviour. After the Second World War, London saw a huge amount of Brutalist buildings built. But it was a short lived movement, and by the 80s this style of building design had fallen out of favour completely. The buildings that remain help to tell us the fascinating history of London’s post-war reconstruction. But we first need to understand the city’s housing situation before the war broke out."
Rosamund Lily West: " Before the Second World War you really have the sense that London is still very much a 19th century city. So with the legacy of industrialisation and how much London grew in the 19th century, anywhere around, you know, factories, docks, mills, you get acres of these Victorian terraced housing, mainly built by speculative builders. So you really get a sense of throughout the 19th century, this idea of kind of substandard housing and this is where you start to first get this idea of slum housing."
Voice over: "Slum housing was overcrowded and unsanitary, large families would usually share just one or two rooms. Rat infestations were common and rampant poverty led to high crime rates in these areas. Lacking in basic amenities like indoor plumbing, disease spread fast, and life expectancy in the slums was low."
Rosamund Lily West: "This really goes into the 20th century and by the interwar period, so between the First World War and the Second World War, the condition of housing, but also the debates and concerns about this really come to a head. You get the 1930 Housing Act and subsequent Housing Acts which talk about unhealthy areas. So this is written down in legislation and this policy later becomes known as slum clearance."
Voice over: "Slum clearances became more and more common throughout the 30s. Rows and rows of Victorian terraces were torn down. The idea was to replace the slums with flats, because this allowed people to be rehoused quickly and all at once. When the Second World War broke out, planned slum clearances and the reconstruction of flats immediately halted. During the Blitz, industrial areas around factories and docks were particularly targeted by German bombers, and it was these areas which also had the highest concentration of slum housing. This meant that many of these streets made up of Victorian terraced houses were damaged, or destroyed entirely as a result of aerial bombardment."
Rosamund Lily West: "And a lot of local authorities, particularly the London County Council, are full of young, exciting, vibrant, innovative architects. You know, a lot of them came out of the war and they're newly trained, newly qualified. And the LCC Architects Department in the 1950s was the largest architect's office in the world. Because of how architecture was done at the time, the framework it was in, but also the size of the challenge of rebuilding London meant that London was this exciting testing ground for all these new ideas and all these new styles."
Voice over: "And one of the styles that emerged at this time was brutalism. Innovations in construction techniques at the time, particularly improvements in concrete technology, meant that the building of these kinds of structures was easier than ever before. Probably one of the most recognisable architectural styles; brutalist buildings can be identified by a few key features. Brutalist buildings heavily feature raw concrete as an exterior material. It is not painted or plastered over; the architect wants you to know what this building is made of. These buildings are large and imposing. Huge, block-like shapes dominate their design, they don’t blend into a skyline, they stick out on purpose. Clean lines and simple geometric shapes give a sense of function over aesthetics (usually). Often constructed from prefabricated elements, repetition is a common theme. Smooth glass and steel can contrast the rough concrete, in a way that draws more attention to the raw materials of the buildings. Basically, it’s pretty hard not to notice a brutalist building, and that’s the point. This is just one of the reasons they would turn out to be so controversial."
Rosamund Lily West: " At the time it was relatively cheap to build in that way. This is at a time when energy is cheap and there's a lot of access to steel and concrete and very large buildings can be built quite cheaply, efficiently and quickly."
Voice over: "As the 50s became the 60s, brutalism was beginning to catch on, and huge concrete blocks were becoming less and less of a minority."
Voice over: "Alison and Peter Smithson met whilst studying architecture and married in 1949. They worked together throughout their careers and would become pioneering figures in the brutalist movement. Construction on Robin Hood Gardens was completed in 1972 and was the only estate designed by the Smithson's to actually be built."
Rosamund Lily West: "Their idea was to kind of recreate and you see this a lot in the post-war era, to recreate the idea of community in Victorian terraced streets up in the skies. The area at the time was quite a working class area, but the building was designed to deal with the noise specifically from the Black Wall Tunnel approach road. So where the site borders the Black Wall Tunnel approach road, there's a high wall which is designed to deal with the noise and deflect the noise. And what the Smithson's did is on the outside of the two blocks, again, one faces a black wall tunnel approach road. That's where they put the kitchens and the bathrooms. So the noisier parts of the blocks have rooms where you don't mind the noise too much. And on the inside of the blocks, the block that which faces the inside of the park is where things like the bedrooms and the living rooms were as well."
Voice over: "This considerate layout, along with the careful landscaping and generously sized flats and maisonettes meant that Robin Hood gardens was a huge success. Its residents, most of whom were families, lived happily on the estate, and Robin Hood Gardens became a monument to the idealistic and hopeful philosophy of brutalist design. So what went wrong? Why do brutalist buildings today have such a bad reputation? Is it really as simple as looks?
Voice over: "Balfron Tower is unique in simultaneously being heralded as an exemplar of post-war social housing, whilst also being regularly voted as the UK's ugliest building."
Rosamund Lily West: "It was designed, you know, whatever you think of the aesthetic style, it was designed very well. It had sort of fitted cupboards, it had storage. You know, the flats were large. And this is for working class people. We are a million miles away from doing that now in terms of council housing and truly affordable housing."
Rosamund Lily West: "And concrete is often seen as not weathering very well. And because again, this is a very grey, rainy country, the rain can stain them. But again, this is partly because a lot of these buildings weren't maintained very well. And you can really see that if you look at, for instance, the Barbican. And the Barbican was deliberately built for middle class residents and the residents there paid more than any other local authority council estate, if you see what I mean. So if you go to the Barbican, you can see how well-maintained that is and how the concrete looks. So you can see that if concrete is maintained properly, it will look, you know, it will stand the test of time and it will look a certain way."
Voice over: "The Barbican stands out as an example of a brutalist estate that is widely appreciated and praised by the public. So why is The Barbican appreciated as ‘beautiful’ whilst many other brutalist estates are branded as ‘Ugly’? Is this building really that different to this one? Or could this have more to do with a societal prejudice about the kind of people who live there?"
Rosamund Lily West: "This common sort of accusation thrown at brutalist buildings, particularly housing estates, is that, yes, they encourage anti-social behaviour and they're hotspots for crime. So it's making a judgment about the quality and the moral character of people based on where they live, which is a very dangerous idea, was nothing to do with the architecture, it's to do with poverty and society and lack of opportunity. That's why there is anti-social behaviour, it's not because of the architecture of the building, it's because of wider societal issues. And it's very easy to point to the building and say, it's because of, of, of the walkways. But it's always worth emphasising that all of these features are also on places like the Barbican estate. So this is not to do with the architecture, this is to do with who runs the building, who funds the building, who maintains the building. It's not necessarily a fault in an architectural style."
Voice over: "Today, Robin Hood Gardens is a shadow of its former self. Years of neglect, decay and anti-social behaviour meant that 75% of Tower Hamlets constituents who voted were in favour of its demolition in 2008. After a long campaign to have the estate heritage listed, this ultimately failed. The western building was torn down in 2018. The eastern building remains, boarded up, and empty, but not for much longer. A new development is being built in its place, with just 45% of these new flats allocated as affordable housing. Built over 50 years ago by the Smithson’s to replace the Victorian slums, Robin Hood Gardens now faces the same fate, becoming the very same problem it was built to solve. But the future may not be so bleak for the other Brutalist buildings throughout London."
Rosamund Lily West: "One of the main things to remember about Brutalism and a lot of post-war architecture is the amazing optimism that contextualises these buildings. The post-war era was a time of of really kind of looking forward and trying to be modern and also trying to make society more equal. You know, brutalist housing estates or any type of kind of post-war council housing, it raised the living standards of hundreds of thousand of Londoners. So there is a real appreciation for post-war architecture. We're again at that tipping moment now with brutalist architecture, it's beginning to be re-assessed, enough time has passed for people to look at it afresh, and those initial memories to fade and for us to look at these buildings differently now."
