ABSTRACT
One of the earliest and largest Design and Technical Aid Service (D&TAS) projects began in 1982 on a particularly bleak and rundown Hackney council estate, Goldsmiths. Goldsmiths Estate has a mix of older low- to medium-rise walk-up apartment blocks built between the two World Wars and newer medium- to high-rise blocks built in the 1960s and 1970s. However many problems there may be—on Goldsmiths, for instance, ‘their internal property was terrible: there was damp everywhere’—what people want is ‘to do something for the kids’. Dee Emerick was one of the most dynamic of the Goldsmiths women. Free Form continued working with the Goldsmiths tenants on Phase II, which included both landscaping and the creation of an under-fives play area. Emerick also talked about the mosaics that were an important feature of the Goldsmiths project, as they were for so many of Free Form’s environmental projects during the D&TAS period.
