{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O1497441"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1497441/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2022NF4699/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2022NF4699/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"low","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2022NF4699","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":null},"record":{"systemNumber":"O1497441","accessionNumber":"E.503-2022","objectType":"Video piece","titles":[{"title":"Robin Hood Gardens, Woolmore Street, London E14 0HG (2018) ","type":"assigned by artist"}],"summaryDescription":"Suh’s panoramic film, Robin Hood Gardens, Woolmore Street, London E14 0HG, is both site-specific and time-specific – a document of the Smithsons’ modular interiors as they have been adapted, decorated and furnished by residents. Suh used time-lapse photography, drone footage, 3D-scanning and photogrammetry to create a visual journey in which the camera ceaselessly pans through and around the building. It is a meditation on home, memory and displacement within a physical structure that is on the verge of demolition, less that fifty years after the architects’ utopian vision was realised. \r\n\r\nGiven access to four flats, three of which were still lived in, Suh conducted intensive scanning and photography of each of these spaces. He took hundreds of shots, which he then stitched together to create the effect of an animation. (It took eight hours to photograph each apartment, and 30 minutes to move his camera on a track between the floor and the ceiling of each room to take 300 photographs, which is speeded up to 30 seconds in the final film.) Meanwhile, photogrammetry allowed him to capture and map the visual information of the room against which these photographs were placed.  \r\n\r\nThe result is a visual journey in which the camera seems to pan vertically and horizontally through the building, moving seamlessly from one space to another. \r\nThe film’s steady, contemplative pace and constant, frontal viewpoint function as a framework within which the myriad details that denote differences of taste, style, culture or circumstance of each flat are revealed. The camera moves along the concrete façade of Robin Hood Gardens, which is punctuated by acoustic fins, down its ‘streets in the sky’, through its doors and windows, and along its rooms, thereby revealing the plan of each apartment and the detritus of the lives lived there. \r\n\r\nIn his films and sculptural works, Suh often uses the idea of movement to convey a distinct emotional register; a sense of being in flux, crossing boundaries, or travelling between psychological states. As part of his dialogue with the residents, the artist asked each to sit in their favourite chair; the sustained motion of the film accentuates the feeling of transition that they are experiencing and heightens the sense of imminence. The artist has said that he was interested in the ‘intangible quality’ of Robin Hood Gardens as much as its architectural shell, the ‘energy, history, life and memory that has accumulated [there].’\r\n\r\nThe piece was widely praised for its innovative and engaging way of representing architecture, and it featured in several roundups of the best things to see at the Biennale. In The Observer, Rowan Moore wrote that the ‘exquisite film by the Korean Do Ho Suh, using techniques reminiscent of both architectural cross-sections and the stripping away of the demolition process, records the outer form and inner spaces of the estate on the point of its disappearance.’\r\n\r\n","physicalDescription":"3-channel video piece","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Do Ho Suh","id":"AUTH352844"},"association":{"text":"artist","id":"AAT25103"},"note":"Born in 1962 in South Korea, Do Ho Suh received a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA in sculpture from Yale University. He currently lives and works in London, New York and Seoul. In addition to his work with the V&A for the Venice Architecture Biennale, Suh has represented Korea at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001, and participated in the Singapore Biennale (2016), 8th Gwangju Biennale (2012), Venice Architecture Biennale (2010), and 6th Liverpool Biennial (2010). \r\n\r\nThe first survey exhibition of Do Ho Suh’s work in Europe was presented at the Serpentine Gallery, London in 2002, and he has staged numerous recent international solo exhibitions and site-specific projects at institutional venues including the Smithsonian (2018); Bildmuseet, Sweden (2018); Whitney Museum of American Art (2017); Contemporary Arts Centre, Cincinnati (2016); MOCA Cleveland (2015 – 2016); The Contemporary Austin, Texas (2014); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea (2013); Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan (2012); Seattle Art Museum, Washington (2011 and 2003) and Tate Modern, London (2011). \r\n\r\nSuh’s work is included in numerous museum collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tate, London; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection, Vienna; Museum Voorlinden, Netherlands; Leeum, Seoul; Artsonje Center, Seoul; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; and 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, among many others.\r\n"}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[],"techniques":[],"materialsAndTechniques":"The film is made using time-lapse photography, drone footage, 3D-scanning and photogrammetry, and documents the interiors and exteriors of Robin Hood Gardens, a condemned council estate in Poplar, East London, in the process of demolition. ","categories":[{"text":"Architecture","id":"THES48993"}],"styles":[],"collectionCode":{"text":"PDP","id":"THES48595"},"images":["2022NF4699"],"imageResolution":"low","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"DAMS","id":"THES280561"},"free":"","case":"","shelf":"","box":""},{"current":{"text":"SC001","id":"THES411134"},"free":"","case":"","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"video","id":"AAT54153"}],[{"text":"video","id":"AAT54153"}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"No","note":"As part of his dialogue with the residents, the artist asked each to sit in their favourite chair, and they are shown in the film (having given appropriate permissions); the sustained motion of the film accentuates the feeling of transition that they are experiencing and heightens the sense of imminence. The artist has said that he was interested in the ‘intangible quality’ of Robin Hood Gardens as much as its architectural shell, the ‘energy, history, life and memory that has accumulated [there].’"}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"London","id":"x28980"},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":""},{"place":{"text":"South Korea","id":"x30519"},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":"Do Ho Suh has studios in London and Seoul"}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"2018","earliest":"2018-01-01","latest":"2018-12-31"},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"","dimensions":[],"dimensionsNote":"","marksAndInscriptions":[],"objectHistory":"Commissioned by the V&A for the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale. The V&A curated a Special Project in collaboration with La Biennale di Venezia, supported by Victoria Miro.","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"'Robin Hood Gardens, Woolmore Street, London E14 0HG (2018) ' A 3-channel video piece by South Korean artist Do Ho Suh, 33 minutes and 25 seconds in length, originally commissioned by the V&A for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. The film is made using time-lapse photography, drone footage, 3D-scanning and photogrammetry, and documents the interiors and exteriors of Robin Hood Gardens, a condemned council estate in Poplar, East London, in the process of demolition.","bibliographicReferences":[],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"In 2017, demolition began of Robin Hood Gardens, the Brutalist housing estate in Poplar, East London, completed in 1972 by British architects Alison and Peter Smithson. Its razing marked the end of a decade-long campaign to save the building, which was controversially denied listed status, and the beginning of a £300-million redevelopment of the site and surrounding area. On the eve of destruction, the V&A salvaged a three-storey section of each façade and the interior fittings of two flats, as an internationally recognised example of Brutalism. \r\n\r\nIn 2018, for the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale the V&A curated a Special Project in collaboration with La Biennale di Venezia, Robin Hood Gardens: A Ruin in Reverse, for which we transported a supplementary fragment to the façade and ‘street in the sky’ to Venice, where it was erected outside the Pavilion of Applied Arts. Inside the pavilion, the V&A commissioned South Korean artist Do Ho Suh, whose practice centres on the idea of home as both a physical structure and lived experience, to create a work in response to the architecture and interiors of Robin Hood Gardens while the second of the two blocks, due to be demolished in 2019, was still occupied. \r\n","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[],"partNumbers":["E.503:1-2022","E.503:2-2022"],"accessionNumberNum":"503","accessionNumberPrefix":"E","accessionYear":2022,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2025-06-21","recordCreationDate":"2019-05-29","availableToBook":false}}