Robin Hood Gardens is a residential estate in Poplar, London, designed in the late 1960s by architects Alison and Peter Smithson and completed in 1972.

[citation needed] A redevelopment scheme, known as Blackwall Reach, involves the demolition of Robin Hood Gardens as part of a wider local regeneration project that was approved in 2012.

An attempt supported by a number of notable architects to head off redevelopment by securing listed status for the estate was rejected by the government in 2009.

[2] The complex was at the north end of the Blackwall Tunnel, where a station of the Docklands Light Railway was built in the 1990s to link the City of London to Canary Wharf.

The Smithsons were influential architects from the Architectural Association group, who had failed to win the Golden Lane Estate contract, but published and promoted their radical design.

Robin Hood Gardens was a physical implementation of these earlier principles, but as part of a design that favoured 'protection', in response to the traffic-bound site, rather than the 'connection' of Golden Lane.

[7] The estate consisted of two long curved blocks facing each other across a central green space, and in total covered 1.5 hectares (3.7 acres).

Another design feature was the wide balconies (the "streets") on every third floor, the concept being to provide public space which would encourage interaction.

Alcoves called "pause spaces" were provided next to the entrance doorways on the "streets" which the Smithsons hoped the residents would personalise and where children would play.

[9] This view has been contested in a recent book about the estate, where residents talk enthusiastically about the social and sensory qualities and uses of the streets in the sky, in marked contrast to the cramped internal corridors and private balconies of the replacement development.

They were so intent, on putting their idea of 'street' into practice, that they missed a golden opportunity of making a real, lasting, contribution to the everyday lives of the East End working-class".

[13] However, residents themselves testified to the estate's rich communal life and the qualities of its architectural forms and spaces: its streets in the sky, elevated up in the open-air, with their extraordinary views across east London; the light-infused, dual-aspect apartments; and the central green and its mound as a site of children's play and access to nature, protected from the tumult of the surrounding roads.

[14] J. Cunha Borges and T. Marat-Mendes, reflecting on Robin Hood Gardens in 2019 believed that "Streets-in-the-sky were a sensible alternative to towerblocks without resorting to low density.

A case study published in The Big Issue magazine shows one owner was offered £178,000 by the council for her two-bedroom flat at Robin Hood Gardens, when an equivalent property in Poplar would cost £347,000.

[31] In October 2009, opposition councillor Tim Archer (Conservative) accused the Council of ignoring maintenance problems to encourage residents to move out.

It has added two sections of the estate's garden and street-facing façades, including one of its elevated walkways that were central to the Smithsons' "streets in the sky" concept.

[35] Although Peter Smithson admitted he had been driven by a combination of urgency, practicality and idealism, he claimed in a 1990s interview that the project had failed, although he largely blamed social issues rather than architectural ones for this failure.