Brutalism as Found: Housing, Form, and Crisis at Robin Hood Gardens, Nicholas Thoburn

A study of the Robin Hood Gardens housing estate in east London, this book critically appropriates Brutalism under the crisis conditions of today. Immersed in the materials, atmospheres, social forms, and afterlives of this extraordinary estate, here Brutalism is wrested from todays privatizing tastes for raw concrete and nostalgia for the post-war class settlement.

The only mass-housing scheme by New Brutalist pioneers Alison and Peter Smithson, Robin Hood Gardens has been the object of much dispute. But the clichйd terms of discussion--is it a concrete monstrosity or a modernist masterpiece?--have marginalized the estates residents and masked the role of the housing crisis and revanchist urbanism in its demolition. Breaking with these narratives, Brutalism as Found centers the estates lived experience by a multiethnic working class, not to displace the architectures experimental qualities of matter, form, and image, but to radicalize them for our present.