© Jack Hobhouse
The four blocks that make up Park Hill social housing estate were left to decay for decades. The external envelope was slowly disintegrating under a thick layer of soot. It was barely possible to tell the originally cream-coloured brickwork apart from the grey concrete frame. Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith designed the complex that was built between 1957 and 1961 on an elevated site above Sheffield train station. Their design was oriented on the Unité d’Habitation and the concepts of Alison and Peter Smithson. Following work between 2010 and 2011 on the northern block, which was the first to be renovated, now Whittam Cox have carefully restored the south-western block and converted it into a student residence.