Fearing Their Symbols

Razed the garden, profaned the chalices and the altars…

Trellick Tower, Golborne Road, Kensington & Chelsea, W10

…by horse the Huns broke into the Monastic library and they tore the incomprehensible books and they vituperated them and they burnt them…

Windmill Lane, Dublin, Dublin 2

…fearing their symbols and characters might be concealing secret blasphemies against their God…

Leake Street, Waterloo, Lambeth, SE1

…who was an iron scimitar.

Robin Hood Gardens, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, E14

From Jorge Luis Borges’ The Theologians (1947)

Statues

The stone unhewn and cold

Tom Murphy's Billy Fury, Albert Dock, Liverpool, Merseyside, L3

Becomes a living mould,

Ivor Roberts-Jones' Sir Winston Churchill, Parliament Square, Westminster, SW1P

The more the marble wastes,

Rowan Gillespie's Famine Memorial, Dublin Quayside, Dublin 1

The more the statue grows.

Edward W. Wyon's Richard Green, East India Dock Road, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, E14

From Michelangelo’s Sonnet 

Robin Hood Gardens

There are issues here about the selection of post-war buildings for listing, a process that was well in train in the 1990s but is now uncertain. There are also less arcane issues that concern historic buildings of all periods: the need to look carefully at past and present evidence and not to be prejudiced by rumour or superficial appearance.

Alison and Peter Smithson's Robin Hood Gardens, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, E14

Underlying these specialist concerns is a wider question about the fate of public housing as a whole. Since 1980, it has been in retreat, with legislation designed to shift it from the public to the private sector.

Alison and Peter Smithson's Robin Hood Gardens, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, E14

Robin Hood Gardens, still council-owned, could become a demonstration of less wasteful funding – if, instead of falling victim to a profit-led development with some affordable housing alongside, it could be refurbished without the high environmental costs associated with demolition.

Alison and Peter Smithson's Robin Hood Gardens, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, E14

From Alan Powers’ Why Robin Hood Gardens deserves to be listed, The Guardian (2009)