Bartlett Design Research Folios

Smout Allen

Infractus
 BARTLETT DESIGN RESEARCH FOLIOS

Smout Allen

Infractus:
The Taking of
Robin Hood Gardens
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 CONTENTS

Project Details 6

Statement about the 8

Research Content and Process

Introduction 10

Aims and Objectives 20

Questions 20

Context 22

Methodology 30

Dissemination 48

Project Highlights 49

Bibliography 50

Related Publications 51

1 (previous) Set of blocks

showing detail point cloud.

2 A World of Fragile Parts,

La Biennale di Venezia,
15th International
Architecture Exhibition, 2016.

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 SMOUT ALLEN INFRACTUS

Project Details

Title Infractus: The Taking of Robin Hood Gardens

Authors Laura Allen and Mark Smout

Output Type Design and exhibition

Exhibition A World of Fragile Parts, Applied Arts Pavilion, La Biennale

di Venezia, 15th International Architecture Exhibition
(28 May to 27 November 2016)

Co-exhibitors Morehshin Allahyari, Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles,

Andreas Angelidakis, Factum Arte, Forensic Architecture, David
Gissen, Rekrei, Sam Jacob Studio, Scan the World, The Institute
for Digital Archaeology, Zamani Project, #NEWPALMYRA

Commissioning Body / Client Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and La Biennale di Venezia

Selection Committee Bill Sherman, Director of Research and Collections, V&A

Curator Brendan Cormier, Senior Design Curator, V&A

Collaborators and ScanLAB Projects

Consultants

Budget £16,000

3 Infractus: The Taking

of Robin Hood Gardens.

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PROJECT DETAILS

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 SMOUT ALLEN INFRACTUS

Statement about the Research Content and Process

Description Methodology

Infractus is a design and exhibition piece 1. Research into the V&A Cast Courts
consisting of six laser-etched crystal models collection and nineteenth-century
capturing moments in the life of the post-war copying and reproduction techniques;
housing estate Robin Hood Gardens prior research into contemporary digital
to its demolition in 2019. The project was copying and reproduction techniques;
commissioned by the V&A for A World
of Fragile Parts – a re-examination of Henry 2. Site recording by LiDAR and
Cole’s 1867 Convention for Promoting photographic techniques;
Universal Reproductions of Works of Art –
at La Biennale di Venezia, 15th International 3. 3D printing and the use of crystal
Architecture Exhibition (2016). Infractus laser etching.
took an innovative and critical approach
to recording and re-presenting architectural
elements, using LiDAR scanning and Dissemination
laser-etching techniques.
Exhibited at A World of Fragile Parts, Applied
Arts Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, 15th
Questions International Architecture Exhibition (2016).
Featured in the Italian/English exhibition
1. What are the limits and potentials catalogue of the same name (Cormier and
of digital processes as records of built Thom 2016). Selected and discussed by
cultural heritage? David Bickle, Director of Design, Exhibitions
& Future Plan at the V&A, as his ‘favourite
2. How can digital tools contribute to and object’ of the exhibition (Bickle 2016).
extend existing techniques of preservation Presented by Smout Allen at the lecture
and reproduction in museum series ‘Kitchen Conversations London:
environments? On Destruction and Preservation in Creative
Process’, The Wapping Project and
3. What alternative creative and The Future Laboratory (2017).
constructive approaches might be taken
to digital copying? How might these
perpetuate material culture for public
audiences, now and in the future?

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 STATEMENT ABOUT THE RESEARCH CONTENT AND PROCESS

Project Highlights

The work was a commission for the first

Special Projects, Applied Arts Pavilion,
a collaboration between the V&A and
La Biennale di Venezia. Taking as its starting
point the 150th anniversary of the V&A’s
foundational Convention for Promoting
Universally Reproductions of Works of Art for
the Benefit of Museums of all Countries,
this international exhibition was an ambitious
effort to consider the implications of digital
technologies for cultural heritage. The
debates it initiated resulted in the V&A’s
major initiative, The Reproduction of Art and
Cultural Heritage (ReACH), launched at
UNESCO in 2017. ReACH sets out to create
guidelines for how to reproduce, store and
share works of art and culture heritage today.
This culminated in the ReACH Declaration
on 8 December 2017 (V&A 2017). While A World
of Fragile Parts was generally important,
Infractus also proved to be specifically
significant for the V&A as an institution:
its highlighting of the imminent demolition
of Robin Hood Gardens set the museum on
a path of travel that led it to acquire a three-
storey section of the estate for preservation
purposes. This was then exhibited at the
16th International Architecture Exhibition
in 2018.

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Introduction

A World of Fragile Parts explored threats

facing global heritage sites and how the
production of copies can aid in the
preservation of cultural artefacts by engaging
the long curatorial history of casts, copies
and replicas. Its central focus was the ‘copy’:
the first section surveyed the history of art
and architectural copies with a display of
plaster casts and related objects from the
V&A’s Cast Courts; and the second presented
a ‘twenty-first century cast court’ consisting
of objects that used digital technologies for
heritage copying. 13 contemporary
practitioners were invited to take part in this
reimagined cast court, including Smout Allen.
The exhibition’s motivating question was:
What is the role and function of digital copies
today? The historical survey established that
the Cast Court collections were intended 4
for educational or exhibition purposes, not in
the main to preserve. The plaster copy was
the nineteenth century’s ‘mass-medium for
dissemination’, exchanged amongst cultural
institutions for the improvement of
knowledge, and largely untroubled by the
questions of authenticity that influence our
contemporary appreciation of replica objects
(Lending 2018). Yet, over time, the value
of the V&A’s copies has shifted as many
plaster casts have outlived their originals: the
best known example is the full-scale brick
and plaster replica of Trajan’s Column (1864),
4 Erecting the cast of
which is now more ‘perfect’ than its Roman Trajan’s Column, c.1873.
original (AD 107–113) that has been severely
degraded due to acid rain wash erosion 5 Robin Hood Gardens,
1972. The central communal
(V&A 2017). Thus, the V&A copies now act as
garden showing the large
critical backups for their historical originals mound built on rubble from
and are important for preservation efforts. the demolished Victorian
terraces that the estate
replaced.

6 Robin Hood Gardens,

1972. ‘Streets in the sky’.

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INTRODUCTION

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 SMOUT ALLEN INFRACTUS

Digital technologies, such as ultra

hi-resolution imagery, digital scanning,
3D printing and virtual reality are the
contemporary processes used in the
recording and reproduction of artefacts,
paralleling the use of plaster casting,
electroplating and photography in the 1850s.
These new techniques allow for more
detailed recording and analysis of in-situ
objects, which thanks to advances in
technology and connectivity can then be
circulated through digital databases. Rather
than being displaced to the museum gallery,
digital copies can now be ‘dematerialised’ to
the hard drive, prompting the question that
underlay the twenty-first-century cast court:
What are the alternative futures for the 7

museum and its immaterial artefacts? As the

curator of the exhibition – the V&A’s Brendan
Cormier – made clear, the intention of this
section was to go beyond preservation
to explore how digital copies can perpetuate
material culture and add an additional
dimension to its understanding (Cormier
and Thom 2016, p. 21).
Smout Allen’s contribution, Infractus: the
Taking of Robin Hood Gardens, used LiDAR
scan data to record architectural elements
of Robin Hood Gardens (RHG), a housing
estate designed in 1972 by Alison and Peter
Smithson in the London Borough of Tower
Hamlets. When we came to the site, it was
in a precarious state of dereliction and semi-
abandonment. Rather than attempting to
create a pristine record of RHG’s architecture,
we instead scanned six places where traces
of inhabitants’ lives were visible or vandalism
and decay was evident (the title, Infractus,
is taken from the Latin meaning ‘broken,
weakened or impaired’). The data was then
given form using 3D crystal laser etching
to create six sets of four glass blocks. Each
set rematerialises one point-cloud 3D image. 7 LiDAR scanner and tripod
recording in an abandoned
kitchen at Robin Hood Gardens.

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 INTRODUCTION

8 LiDAR scan of a kitchen in

the abandoned east block.

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 SMOUT ALLEN INFRACTUS

In order to gather photographic and scan the twenty-first-century cast court did not
material, we obtained access to deserted provide any singular perspective on
flats in both the east and west wings of RHG, preservation. Rather, they opened up critical
which had been stripped of any fittings questions about the role and potential of
worthy of salvage. Working with what digital copying in a world in which material
remained, we sought out three types of place and cultural heritage is under increasing
for scanning: first, places that spoke to threat, whether through war, climate change
neglect in the management and or market-led demolitions.
maintenance of the site: broken windows,
peeling paint, security grills and secondary
glazing; second, architectural details that the
Smithson’s believed would create community
and belonging, testifying to the initial
optimism of the design, such as kitchens
overlooking the central communal garden or
windows on street decks (‘streets in the sky’);
and third, traces of the lives of RHG’s (often
unwillingly) evicted inhabitants: fixtures and
fittings such as kitchen tiles, net curtains,
carpets, soft toys and DIY repairs.
These scanned moments were then
rematerialised in six laser-etched crystal
models – a process normally used for the
creation of cheap mass-produced souvenirs.
This medium was chosen for historical
reasons – tipping our hat to the plaster cast
souvenirs popular in the nineteenth century
– as well as to acknowledge that an act of
material translation had taken place. In the
movement from the Brutalist concrete of
RHG to the more delicate reproduction, the
imperfections and fragility of the digital copy
itself are highlighted.
Other exhibitors in A World of Fragile Parts
included Sam Jacob Studio, who created
a full-sized replica of a refugee shelter from
the Calais Jungle; The Institute for Digital
Archaeology, who recreated the Palmyra Arch
of Triumph, which was destroyed by Islamic
State in 2015; and Forensic Architecture and
their Bomb Cloud Atlas that modelled and
9 A World of Fragile Parts,
3D printed four plume clouds from various
La Biennale di Venezia,
Middle Eastern conflicts. Taken together, the 15th International
artists and architects who contributed to Architecture Exhibition,
2016.

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INTRODUCTION

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SMOUT ALLEN INFRACTUS

10

10–2 (overleaf) Infractus:

The Taking of Robin Hood
Gardens.

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INTRODUCTION

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Aims and Objectives Questions

The research examines the value of 3D 1. What are the limits and potentials of digital
copying and fabrication as a strategy for processes as records of built cultural heritage?
historic preservation and cultural
perpetuation. Its aims and objectives were: In 2008, Margaret Hodge – Minister for Culture
and Tourism and MP for Barking – notoriously
1. To respond critically to suggestions that refused to list Robin Hood Gardens, instead
architecture and cultural artefacts can be agreeing with English Heritage (now Historic
preserved digitally rather than physically; England) that it was unfit for purpose.
Significantly, she also stated that providing
2. To capture and record Robin Hood a 3D scan of the building would compensate
Gardens before demolition and re-present for its demolition:
it as an artefact in a museum
environment; When some concrete monstrosity – sorry,
I mean modernist masterpiece – fails to
3. To research the use of digital recording make the cut despite having expert opinion
and printing methods as creative behind it, let’s find a third way. This is the
alternatives to traditional tools and twenty-first century – a perfect digital
materials for preservation and image of the building, inside and out,
conservation in museum environments. could be retained forever (Hodge 2008).

Hodge’s comment was deeply problematic

as if 3D scanning ‘solves’ all the issues raised
by the destruction of the object, denying the
building’s history and its experiential qualities:
‘few models can deal with the peripheral,
never mind the multi-sensory experience of
being there, and never mind the multi-layered
historical weight of a place or space’ (Hill
2008). It was the trigger for Infractus, which
sought to expose the limits of the perfect
digital copy and challenge the ‘scan and
destroy’ mentality. There was no existing
digital record of RHG. By the time we
recorded it the eastern wing was deserted,
stripped out by salvage companies. A ‘perfect
digital image’ was thus not possible, even if
that had been our intention. Moreover,
Infractus was not an attempt to scan the
whole estate as per Hodge’s remarks; instead,
six moments or episodes were selected in
order to re-present particular narratives in the
building’s life, including that of its decline and

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 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES / QUESTIONS

neglect. Lastly, re-presenting these moments 3. What alternative creative and constructive
in glass and 3D etching – an extremely approaches might be taken to digital
delicate process – highlighted the copying? How might these perpetuate
imperfections and fragility of the digital copy material culture for public audiences, now
itself, which contrary to Hodge’s assertion and in the future?
that it is ‘perfect’ and ‘forever’ is also subject
to error, breakage, obsolescence and decay. Infractus’ specific approach to creatively
engaging with the copy, and audience, was
twofold. As detailed above, the scan itself
2. How can digital tools contribute to and was never intended to provide a perfect or
extend existing techniques of preservation complete copy of the estate, and the
and reproduction in museum environments? rematerialisation of the scans intentionally
exposed their partial and fragile nature. While
There is no doubting the value of new digital materially satisfying objects in their own
copying techniques at a time when so much right, the delicate glass-etched blocks never
of our global cultural heritage is under threat; pretended to be ‘exact’ copies of RHG, any
the production of a ‘digital twin’ is now an more than the V&A’s cast of Trajan’s Column
important and accepted element of exactly emulates stone. With copying,
surveying restoration. Yet, the contention a material translation always occurs, as the
of Infractus – and of the larger exhibition – original is rendered in another material –
is that preservation need not be replication; usually a fine material translated into a less-
it can also be a creative act. Through the expensive one. We suggest that this
retelling of history for museum audiences, translation – the rendering of one material
copies can communicate cultural narratives into another – can open up a productive
from their moment of preservation. As space for reflecting on the original and its
Brendan Cormier notes, copies are tools for evolving meanings. Moreover, just as the
cultural perpetuation that encourage Victorians saw value in copies, we treated
‘layering, interpretation and an on-going the artefacts we created from scans as
dialogue about objects rather than a singular legitimate objects, with distinct auras,
representation that has to be preserved materialities and qualities that can
forever’ (Cormier 2018). Infractus enacted independently interest, educate and provide
such a dialogue by preserving not only pleasure for audiences. We provided
architectural details but those that flashlights so that visitors could play light
registered the passage of time, use and over the glass blocks, picking out and
neglect, insisting that these moments be bringing their etched details to life.
seen as integral to the estate’s history
and any future retellings.

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Context

Infractus was a response to the high-profile

campaign to save Robin Hood Gardens from
demolition. An outline planning application
submitted in January 2012 revealed the wide-
scale Blackwall Reach Regeneration plan,
replacing RHG’s 213 council flats with up
to 1,575 less-spacious new homes and
transferring much of the housing stock from
public to private ownership.
RHG’s 213 flats were contained in two
cranked ten- and seven-storey walls, which
ran parallel to the A102 on its approach
to the Blackwall Tunnel. The estate was
an exemplar of New Brutalism, an aesthetic
and architectural philosophy associated with
socialist utopian ideologies, and was seen
by many in the architectural community as
one of the finest examples of twentieth-
century mass social housing. It was, however,
considered by the council to be a flawed
scheme, a reflection of misplaced utopian
ambitions and compromised social ideals.
The Smithsons redesigned aspects of
the traditional tower block, believing they
could exploit the low cost and simplicity of
mass-produced materials and pre-fabricated
components to provide what they hoped
would be a model for future living. The flats
14 (overleaf) Robin Hood
benefitted from innovative dual-aspect Gardens, eastern wing.
layouts that exceeded the Parker Morris The two walls of housing
mandatory space requirements of the time. are designed as defensive
enclosures, acting as
To recreate the neighbourliness of terraced
acoustic baffles to traffic
streets, they created elevated and wide- noise and enveloping
access decks to enable street life and a communal green space.
facilitate social encounters. The ideal Originally conceived as
a poetic abstraction of the
‘streets-in-the-sky’ concept was not
English landscape, this
achieved, however, with the decks being green space featured two
built narrower than planned due to 13 Sketch by Peter grassy hills, one large and
budgetary constraints, which also blighted Smithson, 1968. one small, containing
Dimensions for a group, buried rubble from the
other aspects of the architectural vision.
illustrating early thinking demolished bomb-
for the organisation of the damaged Victorian terraces
public housing estates. on which they were built.

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CONTEXT

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Indeed, RHG was branded a failure soon after the structure was accompanied by Do Ho
its opening. The flats became depositories Suh’s digital scanning and photogrammetry,
for the socially neglected. Overcrowded, which allowed visitors to move along the
vandalised by residents and deprived walkways through the building, depicting and
of attention by the council, the architecture revealing individual lives in domestic interiors.
soon degraded; progressive deterioration
caused by pollution allowed steel reinforcing
to rust through crumbling concrete, windows
were smashed and burnt-out cars were
dumped on the hill. Vandalism was seen as
a key indicator of resident dissatisfaction
with the living conditions.
After years of threats of demolition and
subsequent campaigns for heritage listing
by The Twentieth Century Society, Building
Design magazine and the Commission
for Architecture and the Built Environment
(CABE), the architectural community rallied
to offer testimony to RHG’s significance.
Richard Rogers – who compared the estate
to Bath’s Royal Crescent – described the
scheme as Britain’s most important post-war
social housing development, while Zaha
Hadid declared it her favourite building
in London.
As mentioned previously, our project
responds to a significant moment in the
estate’s fight for survival: Margaret Hodge’s
decisive refusal to list the estate and
suggestion that it could be digitally scanned
instead. RHG was eventually demolished
in 2019. Before this, however, and a year after
A World of Fragile Parts, the V&A acquired
a three-storey section of the garden and
street-facing façade, including the complete
repeating pattern of prefabricated concrete
of a section of the ‘streets in the sky’ and two
15 Signs of dereliction in
maisonette flats with their interior fittings.
the estate, some of which
A section of the salvaged structure was then were captured in our scans.
exhibited in Robin Hood Gardens: A Ruin in
Reverse at the 16th International Architecture 16 A salvaged fragment of
Robin Hood Gardens
Exhibition in 2018, continuing the dialogue
purchased by the V&A and
the V&A began with the estate when it exhibited at the 16th
commissioned Infractus. On this occasion, International Architecture
Exhibition 2018.

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CONTEXT

16

15

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SMOUT ALLEN INFRACTUS

17

17 Doh Ho Suh’s commissioned

film of the estate uses time-
lapse photography, 3D scanning
and photogrammetry to
move vertically and horizontally
through the building.

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 CONTEXT

18

18 The demolition of the

estate from 2017 to 2019
was described as a failure
by Historic England to not
list significant examples of
the UK post-war housing
programme.

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Methodology

1. Research into the V&A Cast Courts

collection and nineteenth-century
copying and reproduction techniques;
research into contemporary digital
copying and reproduction techniques

This project began by thoroughly

researching contemporary methodologies
for recording and site-surveying, such
as triangulation, photography and digital
photogrammetry. Similar research was
undertaken into modes of artefact
production from mould-making and
plaster casting methods of artefact 19
production, both historical and
contemporary. Technologies suitable for
Infractus were ultimately chosen in
conversation with the exhibition curators
of A World of Fragile Parts and ScanLAB
Projects who have unparalleled expertise
in scanning material artefacts and
buildings and reproducing them on web
platforms and in immersive installations
and objects.

19 Casting marks resulting

from the use of multiple
moulds are visible in many
artefacts in the V&A Cast
Courts, such as this bust of
Piero di Cosimo de’Medici
1453 (sculpted) 1899 (cast).

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 METHODOLOGY

2. Site recording by LiDAR and the Smithson’s design reflects the laser
photographic techniques perfectly, but broken glass blocks and the
gloss surface of lift shafts give slightly
Selected fragments of Robin Hood mistaken measurements and noisy data. These
Gardens were captured using terrestrial, mismeasurements, normally excluded by
long-medium range, 3D-laser pulse-based rigorous surveying filters, remain
scanning, using the FARO Focus3D X330, embedded. Like maker’s marks, they are
which scans 360 degrees at a distance of telltale signs of a technology that on the
0.6 to 330 m. The choice of scanner was one hand captures a meticulous and viable
determined by the dimensions of the site facsimile of the world, while on the other
and spaces, as well as by access time to expresses the inherent imperfections
the site. of digital precision.
LiDAR scanning is by now a familiar tool
for surveying built cultural heritage and is
used widely in the field of archaeology and
preservation to provide documentary
records of vulnerable and inaccessible
sites. It is a critical tool in non-contact
documentation of cultural heritage,
allowing for high-resolution 3D recordings
of landscapes, monuments and artefacts
(Factum Arte 2013).
Laser scanning produces millions of
accurately measured points in the X, Y and
Z axis, representing the surface of the
scanned object. This point cloud of raw
data can be converted to CAD and other
imaging programs to produce accurate
high-definition 3D models with very large
data sets. Scanning a space is a relatively
simple process that involves placing
a terrestrial laser scanner on a tripod. As it
rotates, an infra-red laser is bounced off
a fast-spinning mirror. The device then
records the precise position and distance
of each point the laser hits.
Each scan contains millions of
individually measured points, captured by
the scanner as part of a 360-degree
sphere of survey information. The resulting
high-resolution point-cloud of data is
a highly detailed 3D digital model;
however, not all surfaces are captured
perfectly. The rough-finished concrete of

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20

20–1 Terrestrial LiDAR

scanning used in an
archaeological setting
at Fort Conger, Ellesmere
Island, Canadian Arctic
Archipelago. This is a key
heritage site of pioneering
expeditions in the late
1870s and 80s, which is now
threatened by climate
change and human activity.

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METHODOLOGY

21

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SMOUT ALLEN INFRACTUS

22 Scanning interior and

exterior spaces.

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METHODOLOGY

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23

23 Stainless steel lift doors.

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 METHODOLOGY

24

24 A security grill and

abandoned soft toy.

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25

25 A panel of broken glass bricks.

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 METHODOLOGY

26

26 Remnants of a kitchen
with exposed plumbing
and electrics.

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SMOUT ALLEN INFRACTUS

27

27 A net curtain folded

into secondary glazing.

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 METHODOLOGY

28

28 A triangular window
looking out onto the
‘streets in the sky’.

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3. 3D printing and the use of crystal etching

Glass engraving in 330 x 100 x 100 mm blocks

was chosen as a method to capture and
present the digital data collected from Robin
Hood Gardens. Sub-surface laser engraving
is used commercially to produce 3D images
from 3D point clouds. Two lasers firing
thousands of impulses are aimed into the
cast glass block. 40 to 80 m fractures are
produced where they rectify and create
excess heat, each visible as a tiny dot floating
in space. Glass with high optical clarity
reduces the refractive index, which is
important in ensuring the integrity of the
image. The printing technology limits the
number of points that can be used, as
excessive fractures can weaken the glass
blocks making them too fragile to exhibit.
Indeed, the process required considerable
experimentation as many of our test pieces
failed, fracturing in the process of their
making, and reminding us again of the
fragility of the chosen medium.

29–34 (overleaf) Processing

the point-cloud data into
six sets of four blocks.

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METHODOLOGY

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SMOUT ALLEN INFRACTUS

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METHODOLOGY

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34

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35

35 Infractus at A World
of Fragile Parts,
La Biennale di Venezia,
15th International
Architecture Exhibition,
2016. Torches were
supplied to light up the
point cloud captured
in the glass blocks.

36 Detail of laser-etched
point cloud.

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Dissemination

Exhibition and Publications

Exhibited at A World of Fragile Parts,

Applied Arts Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia,
15th International Architecture Exhibition
(2016), which received international press
coverage. The project was featured in
the Italian/English exhibition catalogue
of the same name (Cormier and Thom 2016).

Lecture

· 
Kitchen Conversations London:
On Destruction and Preservation in
Creative Process, The Wapping Project
and The Future Laboratory (2017)

Media

Selected and discussed by David Bickle,

Director of Design, Exhibitions & FuturePlan
at the V&A, as his ‘favourite object’ of the
exhibition:
· David Bickle on Infractus: The Taking of
Robin Hood Gardens (2016). Produced
by La Biennale di Venezia and Victoria and
Albert Museum.
[Viewed 10 December 2020].
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLcCy28DIWw

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 DISSEMINATION / PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS

Project Highlights

The work was a commission for the first

Special Projects, Applied Arts Pavilion,
a collaboration between the V&A and
La Biennale di Venezia. Taking as its starting
point the 150th anniversary of the V&A’s
foundational Convention for Promoting
Universally Reproductions of Works of Art for
the Benefit of Museums of all Countries, this
international exhibition was an extremely
ambitious effort to consider the implications
of digital technologies for cultural heritage.
The debates it initiated resulted in the
V&A’s major initiative, The Reproduction of Art
and Cultural Heritage (ReACH), launched
at UNESCO in 2017. This set out to create
guidelines for how to reproduce, store and
share works of art and culture heritage today,
culminating in the ReACH Declaration on
8 December 2017 (V&A 2017). While A World
of Fragile Parts was generally important,
Infractus also proved to be specifically
significant for the V&A as an institution:
its highlighting of the imminent demolition
of Robin Hood Gardens set the museum on
a path of travel that led it to acquire a three-
storey section of the estate for preservation
purposes. This was then exhibited at
La Biennale di Venezia, 16th International
Architecture Exhibition in 2018.

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 SMOUT ALLEN INFRACTUS

Bibliography

Bickle, D. (2016). ‘Infractus: The Taking of

Robin Hood Gardens: Smout Allen with
ScanLAB Projects, 2016’.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLcCy28DIWw
Cormier, B. (2018). Copy Culture: Sharing in the
Age of Digital Reproduction. London:
V&A Publishing.
Cormier, B. and Thom, D. (2016). A World
of Fragile Parts. London: V&A Museum.
Factum Arte (2013). ‘3D Scanning for Cultural
Heritage Conservation’. Factum Arte.
[Viewed 7 November 2020].
www.factum-arte.com/pag/701/3D-
Scanning-for-Cultural-Heritage-
Conservation
Hill, D. (2008). ‘Robin Hood Gardens is Not
the Same as a Digital Model of Robin
Hood Gardens’. Medium. 4 March.
[Viewed 12 November 2020].
https://medium.com/iamacamera/robin-
hood-gardens-is-not-the-same-as-a-
digital-model-of-robin-hood-gardens-
e595790d0948
Hodge, M. (2008). ‘Modern Buildings
Must Prove Thier Worth, says Hodge’.
Building Design. 26 February.
[Viewed 7 November 2020].
www.bdonline.co.uk/opinion/modern-
buildings-must-prove-their-worth-says-
hodge/3107228.article
Lending, M. (2018). Plaster Monuments:
Architecture and the Power of
Reproduction. Princeton University Press.
V&A (2017). ReACH (Reproduction of Art and
Cultural Heritage).
[Viewed 7 November 2020].
www.vam.ac.uk/research/projects/reach-
reproduction-of-art-and-cultural-
heritage#outputs

50
 BIBLIOGRAPHY / RELATED PUBLICATIONS

Related Publications by the Researchers

Allen, L. and Smout, M. (2016). ‘What are the Alternative Futures

for the Digital Museum and its Immaterial Artifacts?’.
Cormier, B. and Thom, D. eds. A World of Fragile Parts. London:
V&A Publishing. pp. 218–9.

Contextual Articles

Cormier, B. and Thom, D. eds (2016). ‘Infractus: The Taking

of Robin Hood Gardens’. A World of Fragile Parts. London:
V&A Publishing. pp. 186–7.

Cormier, B. (2018). Copy Culture: Sharing in the Age of Digital

Reproduction. London: V&A Publishing. pp. 1–26.

Hill, D. (2008). ‘Robin Hood Gardens is Not the Same

as a Digital Model of Robin Hood Gardens’. Medium. 4 March.

Related Writings by Others

Biennale Architettura 2016 – International Exhibition (2016).

‘A World of Fragile Parts’. Google Arts & Culture.

Cormier, B. (2017). ‘Against a Pile of Ashes’. V&A Blog. 15 June.

Gray, M. (2017). ‘Why it’s Time to Talk Seriously about Digital

Reproductions’. Apollo Magazine. 15 December.

Olesen, K. (2018). ‘From Urban Vision to Museum Piece’.

Cairns, G. ed. AMPS Proceedings Series 15: Tangible–Intangible
Heritage(s): Design, Social and Cultural Critiques on the Past,
Present and the Future. 2. pp. 97–102.

Printed article


Online article
(clickable link)

51
 SMOUT ALLEN INFRACTUS

Image Credits Bartlett Design Research Folios

All images © Smout Allen, unless otherwise ISSN 2753-9822

stated.
© 2022 The Bartlett School
Photo: Richard Stonehouse
1, 3, 10-2, 36 of Architecture. All rights reserved.
Photo:
4  Isobel Agnes Cowper.
V&A Archive, MA/32/29, Guardbook Text © the authors
negative 9876. © Victoria and Albert
Museum Founder of the series and lead editor:
5–6 © Sandra Lousada/Mary Evans Yeoryia Manolopoulou
Picture Library
7–8, 29–34 ScanLab Projects Edited by Yeoryia Manolopoulou,
13 The Alison and Peter Smithson Archive. Barbara Penner, Phoebe Adler
Gift of Smithson Family, 2003. Robin
Hood Gardens. Folder BA184. Frances Picture researcher: Sarah Bell
Loeb Library, Harvard University
Graduate School of Design. Additional project management:
16 © Victoria and Albert Museum Srijana Gurung
18 Video © Dezeen
www.dezeen.com Graphic design: Objectif
20–1 Courtesy of CyArk
Layout and typesetting: Siâron Hughes

Every effort has been made to trace

the copyright holders of the material
reproduced in this publication. If there
have been any omissions, we will be
pleased to make appropriate
acknowledgement in revised editions.
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