On the occasion of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018, London’s Victoria&Albert Museum is going to recreate a section of Robin Hood Gardens, a social housing estate that provides a defining example of Brutalist architecture. Designed by Alison and Peter Smithson back in the day, it is currently being demolished.

The initiative comes from a radical attempt to preserve a stunning piece of architecture otherwise on its way of extinction due to the redevelopment of the area.

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The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Originally designed in the late 1960s and completed in 1972, Robin Hood Gardens unfolds into two long curved apartment blocks of ten storeys (east) and seven storeys (west) with a central green area and small man-made hill. First built as a social housing complex, it has been risking demolition and dismantling since 2009.

A tireless campaign to get the building listed as a historical landmark, with support from Richard Rogers – whose passionate letter was signed by the late Zaha, Robert Venturi and Toyo Ito Hadid among the others –, obstructed the way to destruction. Alas, by 2014 a final ministerial decision left the way open to proceed with demolition and redevelopment, so that the 3,7-acres area will soon be replaced by a £300 million project aimed to build private yet affordable dwelling units.

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The Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Plenty of illustrious voices have raised to endorse the demolition of Robin Hood Gardens, which is not necessarily seen as a virtuous example of New Brutalism and said to be kept safe over the decades only by the Smithsons’ fame.

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The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Back in 1976, the husband and wife joined up the Venice Biennale by showcasing billboards portraying their Robin Hood Gardens social housing project in London under construction and a bench based on one of the concrete columns that articulated the facade of the building. “A building under assembly is a ruin in reverse”, they wrote.

Hence the title of the exhibition: “Robin Hood Gardens: A Ruin in Reverse”. Now, less than 50 years later, the same property did turn into an actual wreck, and indeed deserves one last tribute where it all started, Venice.

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The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

In partnership with Swan Housing Association, London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Mayor of London and Muf Architecture/Art, the V&A has acquired a three-storey section, both the exteriors and interiors of a maisonette flat, to star at Venice Architecture Biennale 2018.

In collaboration with ARUP, which designed a scaffolding system to let visitors walk in and explore the segment of the building, the V&A aims at making the original space layout fully enjoyable, along with its noise-reducing features, like exterior concrete fins, and its elevated walkways, known as 'streets in the sky', intended to foster interaction between neighbours.

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The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

London’s V&A Museum is definitely familiar with this sort of initiatives: “Since its foundation, the V&A has preserved and exhibited large fragments of architecture – from the 17th-century timber facade of Sir Paul Pindar's House in Bishopsgate, London, to the gilded Music Room salvaged from Norfolk House in St. James's Square, London”.

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The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.