While rooting through the image library this photograph turned up. It’s of the Hyde Park Flats complex in Sheffield in about 1988, taken for a long forgotten college assignment.
It’s a dramatic (if grainy) image that shows how aspirations for public housing have changed since the 1950’s when Hyde Park was conceived and built as part of the post-war slum clearances. These huge schemes shamelessly followed the aspirations of Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation streets in the sky principles with large apartments (flats as they were once called) built to take families from the run down housing of the surrounding areas. The entire complex was designed to be almost self sustaining with homes, shops, pubs, clubs, offices and schools.
Sadly the inevitable social problems damned Hyde Park to demolition a few short years after this photograph was taken.
It’s fun to imagine how Hyde Park would look with 21st century architecture, construction techniques and materials.