Thursday 4 March 2021, 6pm
Join event online via Microsoft Teams

Brutalism and Public Housing: Form, Class, and Crisis at Robin Hood Gardens

With Nicholas Thoburn

Brutalist architecture draws its ‘rough poetry’ from the confusion of materials and social relations it finds at hand. But what can this formulation tell us about Brutalism’s class dimensions, and the Brutalist revival today? 

This talk pursues these questions through the experimental forms, charged voids, and afterlives of east London’s Robin Hood Gardens.

The talk draws on a three-year research project about the architecture, lived experience, and demolition of the estate, the only mass-housing scheme by New Brutalist pioneers Alison and Peter Smithson.

Nicholas Thoburn is Reader in sociology at the University of Manchester. He is author of Anti-Book: On the Art and Politics of Radical Publishing and Deleuze, Marx and Politics. He is currently writing a book about Robin Hood Gardens.

________________________________

Click here to join the event online via Microsoft Teams (or copy and paste the link below into your browser).

Tips: Microsoft Teams works best on Chrome or Microsoft Edge. If you experience issues joining the event, it might be because you are already signed into Teams with a different account. Try opening an incognito window in your browser to get around this problem. If you try to join using a mobile device, you may be asked to download the Teams app.

We recommend testing the link in advance of the meeting. Feel free to contact us if you have trouble (assc@bbk.ac.uk) and we will do our best to help.