[ Zoran Radivojevic ] Robin Hood Gardens in depth

Zoran Radivojevic (Cazenove Architects) wowed the judges to take first place in the Robin Hood Gardens competition with his treatment of the buildings as giant carcasses. Explore Radivojevic's design in more depth.

What the architect says…

In the 'City through Buildings' proposition the Robin Hood Gardens are seen as a s structure of cumulated encapsulated social and physical energies, a previous asses and a carcass like provision for us a t present, that must be pursued and reused.

Modern architecture contains the principle of obsolesce built within. There is a moment when a modern building becomes not modern any more when it becomes outdated, irresponsive to its own brief to the demands of time presents. It is predicted that changes in our societies and technologies within the next 15 to 30 years will be the most intense since ever this civilisation exists.

The question to list Robin Hood Gardens or not has been removed here from the present discourse still much tainted with the counter reactions to Modernity.

This proposition is granting the right for that decision to oncoming generations within the next 15 to 30 years.

'City through Buildings' proposition is readdressing the idea of the street in the air. Corridors which are taking dwellers to their flats, even open decks as they are in the Robin Hood Gardens, aren't streets but still housing corridors in the air. The streets are about lives that do not necessarily belong there.

The 'City through Buildings' proposition a percentage of facade panels are removed from the buildings' elevations and the generated voids are populated with light structure cocoons, extensions to apartments or small work studio units and retails. Some of the apartments are removed and the hollows are designed to be core transient public spaces with community rooms of small businesses for letting. The local residents and public are taken in and out of the buildings by the sets of externally attached stairwells and ramps.

This proposal intends to reveal the unusual and rarely found spatial beauty of the cross wall structures and the dynamics of the moved buildings masses.