Park Hill, a huge concrete-framed modernist social-housing scheme, was completed in 1961 when Sheffield had near full employment and young architects - in this case Ivor Smith and Jack Lynn - were developing new ways to satisfy the need for affordable flats for rent. Since then the national housing scene has been transformed, a change embodied in the fate of Park Hill, stripped back to its frame and recast for, largely, private ownership. Keith Collie's photographs capture the cliff-like grandeur and formal beauty of this massive structure in ruins and the epic scale of the renovation. David Levitt provides the background to the current renovation project by developer Urban Splashm and Jeremy Till's essay puts the Park Hill story into the wider context of architecture and the welfare state.

Before the Second World War Sheffield Council planned a major slum clearance and redevelopment programme in the Park Hill area. But this was largely halted due to the War. Afterwards, a radical scheme, under the leadership of the Council's chief architect John Lewis Womersley, was introduced - the Park Hill redevelopment. It was viewed as revolutionary at the time, featuring a deck access scheme. Construction began in 1957 and Park Hill (Part One) was officially opened by Hugh Gaitskell, in 16 June 1961. Park Hill Part 2, becoming known as Hyde Park, and built adjacent, was opened in 1965 by the Queen Mother. Although the two areas were initially popular and successful, over time Hyde Park was nicknamed 'Alcatraz' by some residents due to its many social problems. The largest of the Hyde Park blocks - Block B was demolished in the early 1990s. The remaining Blocks A and C were refurbished. Block D was also demolished. In 1998 Park Hill Part One was given Grade II* listing making it the largest listed building in Europe. Obviously controversy has courted this entire development from the outset and this book attempts to present a balanced view of many of the events as they have taken place.

BRUTAL NORTH is the first photographic exploration of modernist and Brutalist architecture across the North of England. During the post-war years the North of England saw the building of some of the most aspirational, enlightened and successful modernist architecture in the world. For the first time, a single photographic book captures those buildings, in all their power and progressive ambition. Over the last few years acclaimed photographer Simon Phipps has travelled and sought out the publicly commissioned architecture of the post-war North. From Newcastle's Byker Wall Estate, voted the best neighbourhood in the UK, to the extraordinary Park Hill Estate in Sheffield, from Preston's sweeping bus station and Liverpool's Royal Insurance Building, these structures have seen off threats to their survival and are rightly celebrated for the imprint they leave upon the skyline and the cultural life of their cities. This inspiring invitation to explore northern modernism includes maps and detailed information about all the architecture photographed. 'Captures the most aspirational and enlightened architecture of the north's postwar years.' Guardian Please note this is a fixed-format ebook with some colour pages and may not be well-suited for older e-readers.

The Unite d'Habitation at Marseilles is a key building of the twentieth century, and a seminal work in Le Corbusier's oeuvre. A precursor of buildings in Nantes, Berlin, Briey-en-Foret and Firminy, it established, in built form, Le Corbusier's ideas of public housing that had existed only on paper for more than twenty-five years. David Jenkins argues that the Marseilles Unite stands out as a powerful and convincing testament of Le Corbusier's fundamental humanism and his faith in the principles of the Ville Radieuse and the Brutalist medium of rough cast concrete which in other, less able hands, have since been called into question.