Streets in the Sky

The infamous Park Hill housing estate in Sheffield, England is set for a total overhaul, courtesy Urban Splash (mentioned here earlier).

Park Hill has long been synonymous with the failures of Modernism:

...[T]here is more than a handful of buildings that have achieved iconic status for all the wrong reasons: buildings which are so widely loathed that they have come to symbolise what the public at large dislike about Modernist architecture: for years, Trellick Tower held this dubious honour. Not far behind was the Park Hill estate in Sheffield.

Completed in 1961, Park Hill was intended to provide local authority housing for thousands of people. A largely working-class industrial city, whose best days were behind it, the city fathers of Sheffield hoped that Park Hill would signal the rejuvenation of the town and provide quality homes in a deprived area.

Its architects, Ivor Smith and Jack Lynn, were greatly influenced by the questions raised by well-known Team 10 architects Alison and Peter Smithson, whose competition images for an earlier housing estate (at Golden Lane, in London) generated buzz and controversy for their juxtaposition of everyday "pop" figures against a Modern backdrop (that's Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio on the left, scurrying out of view).

That juxtaposition was meant as an attack of sorts: is Modern architecture truly responsive to everyday modern life? Where, in the Bauhaus world--where everywhere becomes a picture of health, order, and harmony--is there space for the frivolous and the ephemeral, the personal, or the quixotic? Is Modernist architecture an adequate response to complex human experience? Can it be?

The design of Park Hill attempted to address these concerns. It was to be a symbol of progress, with long, snaking apartment blocks linked to one another by continous 12-foot-wide terraces, or "streets in the sky": broad, linear, seemingly infinite common spaces would induce the development of a vibrant and strong community, where individual uniquenesses would be celebrated alongside collective strengths. The bustle of prewar city streets would be transferred up unto the air, into a clean and new context. (This impulse was one of the reasons the entire complex became a national historical landmark in 1998, over the objections of many who wanted to bulldoze the entire thing.)

Each apartment had a front door which looked out onto a twelve-feet wide access deck ('street'), which ran from one side of the scheme to the other. Bridges carried the street through the entire scheme, allowing milk floats to trundle from door to door.

Jack Lynn was worried that the lobby space in other Modernist estates tended to become a no-man's land, serving neither public needs nor offering privacy to residents, and it was hoped that the 'streets' would solve this problem. He remarked enthusiastically on the different colours of linoleum at each doorstep as proof that residents' individuality was not being smothered by gargantuan surroundings.

But Park Hill's problems quickly became apparent. The streets allowed some of the worst aspects of urban life to remain (muggers found they made convenient getaway routes), whilst failing to preserve the better aspects.

They were never really streets in the real sense. Although the architects had included shops, a school, and a pub in order to create a distinctive community within the estate, the access decks were really just long walkways with none of the vibrancy, diversity, and organic feel of a city street which has grown and changed over decades or even centuries.

Urban Splash's "part-privatization" scheme proposes renovations both cosmetic and structural, yielding a combination of mixed-income residences and commercial space. Rehabilitation of the building's original patchwork facades, and a redesign of its "streets," will enhance Park Hill's visual appeal, while a reorganization of the ground plane--the complex of buildings stretches across rolling hilltop topography--will connect the buildings more intimately with the fabric of surrounding Sheffield. Apartment interiors will be reconfigured and will sport new fixtures and finishes.

As the project's brochure notes, the gist of the overhaul is simple:

"...[M]ake it a place, make it a special place, make it an extra special place....Our plan revolves around making Park Hill a special place, a proper place, knitting it into Sheffield, making it so special that you wouldn't dare leave Sheffield without a visit. People will want to see Park Hill because of its special place in history, people will want to see Park Hill because it's remade Sheffield, people will want to see Park Hill because it needs to be seen....

We know Park Hill's a bruiser....We know it's not everyone's cup of tea...but we don't think the answer lies in a facelift, after all, its looks are a critical part of the story, they are a critical part of the architecture of Park Hill, they are critically Park Hill. We think the real answer lies in injecting a little romance into the place. We think the way to soften its brutality without softening its character is to create a world class landscape, inside and outside its walls."

Below: Park Hill as it exists today, looming over Sheffield; and a glimpse of what might be.

Another interesting, similar project here (also). Thanks, Julia!