Try looking east for inspiration

摘要

The two plans favoured by Tower Hamlets Council for the replacement of Robin Hood Gardens are atrocious for various reasons -the absence of council housing, the total lack of architectural imagination, the sheer ignorance of the already horrifically congested site - but, most of all, for something less remarked upon: the lack of communal space.rnWhat makes Robin Hood Gardens worth saving is not its architecture per se, but its spaces. The streets in the sky, and the huge, verdant space between the blocks, which create a surreal oasis of quiet in the midst of perhaps the noisiest place in London. This will be lost, in favour of one of those poky strips of green we like to glorify with the pompous phrase "public realm". Communal space has been all but obliterated.