Zaha Hadid has made an impassioned plea tothe government to list Robin Hood Gardens, promising to write to primeminister Gordon Brown’s wife Sarah Brown as well as architectureminister Margaret Hodge before its fate is decided.Alongsidefellow leading architects including Richard Rogers and Norman Foster,Hadid has already signed BD’s petition to save the Smithsons-designedestate.However, in an exclusive interview this week ahead oftoday’s closing date for representations to Hodge, the world’s mostfamous woman architect revealed her distress at the prospect of the“heroic” piece of architecture being lost.Hadid knows the eastLondon estate well, and has taken AA students to visit it as part oftheir studies. “The Smithsons were very, very important — Robin HoodGardens is our only Unité,” she said. “Wedon’t have another building like it. There weren’t many slab blocksbuilt in that period, and RHG is particularly interesting because ofthe enclosed “streets” and the public space.“I look aroundLondon and all I see is buildings from this era — slab blocks that areeither being pulled down or defaced, which means the city is slowlylosing its transparency. It’s terrible Pimlico School has gone, butthis is a rare project. It is part of the English brutalism which isvery different from that of other countries, which have looked aftertheir buildings.”She said there was still the opportunity forthe estate to be “looked after”, and that any refurbishment should besensitive to its original concept. “The intervention needs to be gentleso it doesn’t interfere very much,” she added.Hadid is writing to Sarah Brown because they are acquaintances through Brown’s patronage of the Maggie’s Centres.
www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3114811&c=1