Publications

Park Hill: What Next?
Andrew Saint, John Allan, Dan Cruickshank, Roger Harper and Philip Booth, David Mellor, Mohsen Mostafavi, Cedric Price, Ivor Smith
72pp, 60 ills, 135 x 175 mm, 1996 ISBN 1 870890 65 5 Price �8.95

Constructed between 1957 and 1961, the Park Hill Estate in Sheffield is one of the largest public-housing projects of its generation. Today, although still fully occupied, it can no longer sustain the optimistic confidence of its instigators. What was once a gleaming housing estate - a radical response to the run-down and crime-ridden urban working-class housing stock of Sheffield - is itself moving towards ruination. Historians, critics and practising architects were asked: What do we do next? Is it possible to reverse the physical and social decay of the estate? Moreover, are the problems faced by Park Hill and estates like it sufficient cause for successive governments' eradication of an enlightened housing policy?

Their responses are given in this book, which attempts to use Park Hill not only as a case-study for the revision of modernist housing but as a point of reference for constructing new frameworks for future discussions and a renewed commitment to public housing.