Sky-high streets of future that turned into brutal heritage

To historian Andrew Heath the flats made an immediate impact when he first stepped off the train in Sheffield years ago. Built between 1957 and 1960, they loomed over the city like a castle, 950 flats built on top of a 1:10 gradient, making them range from four storeys high to 13 floors at the end closest to the city centre. All of the walkways between the decks reached the ground at some point, and they were wide enough to accommodate milk floats.

For communities moved into Park Hill through slum clearance, street names from their old neighbourhoods were used and neighbours were rehoused together where possible. A school, a pub and shops were incorporated into the design, and the flats attracted worldwide attention for their innovative ideas. But it wasn't that long after the flats were completed and a thousand families rehomed in them that they began to attract criticism for being "the ugliest building in Europe" as well as praise from the architecture and design cognoscenti, says Dr Heath, who'll be giving a free lecture about the history of Park Hill Flats in Sheffield later this month.

"My grandmother was one of the first residents of Sheffield's Manor Estate, where every house had its own garden. After the Second World War there was a wave of such council house building, on the edge of town, where it was thought people wanted to live. But many people didn't like being pushed to the periphery, and at the end of the 1950s city councils, architects and planners became interested in building upwards and closer to the centre of town.

"Those involved in Park Hill Flats were influenced by the French architect Le Corbusier, who was a great fan of mechanisation. He

thought most cities were a mess that needed knocking down and rebuilding. He even wanted to knock down Paris and replace its older buildings with tower blocks built in parkland. It wasn't about an aesthetic so much as effective and rational design. Luckily the authorities in Paris didn't listen to his ideas for giant developments built over enormous motorways, although some places like Marseille did embrace the concept."

Dr Heath says the fortunes of Park Hill flats mirror the fortunes of the the Steel City itself. "Before the war, Park Hill had been an area of high-density back-to-back housing with little sanitation and Chicago-style gang warfare. It wasn't surprising that planners later wanted to do something different.

"On the one hand Park Hill Flats were a brave decision to embrace modern European architecture and the creation of a different community to the isolated ones on the edge. But by the time they were finished the world had already started to move on to yet another idea.

"Some people were happy to move into them, but others always wanted to live in a house. The flats were part of a time when councils were more authoritarian, telling you what was good for you, with little consultation.

The flats became a magnet for mugging, vandalism and other crime, and when Sheffield lost 40,000 steel industry jobs in the 1980s, working class areas like Park Hill took a lot of the pressure."

Park Hill Flats went into a downward spiral that would surely lead towards demolition, But in 1998 the flats were, highly controversially, judged to have enough architectural merit to deserve a Grade II* listing, making them Europe's largest listed building. In 2004, the innovative development company Urban Splash was selected as a partner with Sheffield City Council, English Heritage, the Homes and Communities Agency and others to transform the flats into 900 dwellings fit for 21st century living. The first properties will be available for sale or rent in 2012.

"New developments now need to strive for mixed use, mixed income and a mixture of rental and purchased properties," says Dr Heath. "I can't make my mind up about Park Hill Flats. They fascinate me, but what's sad is that their new incarnation will mean that the people they were originally intended to house will not be able to afford to live in them."

n Andrew Heath's talk on Park Hill Flats will be held 1pm-2pm on Wednesday, November 10, at Weston Park Museum, Sheffield. www.museums-sheffield.org.uk.