Simon Jenkins' condemnation of Robin Hood Gardens, "a twin-slab estate of flats in east London ... grimly sandwiched between a main road and the approach to the Blackwall tunnel", may entertain but contributes little to the debate about the re-use of historic buildings (This icon of 60s New Brutalism has its champions. So let them restore it, June 20).

The late Peter and Alison Smithson, far from being uncritical "followers of Le Corbusier", were among the first architects to criticise the inhumane consequences of his theories. Against prevailing modernist orthodoxy they thought there was much to learn from traditional streets and the fine details of the way peoples occupied and personalised space: "The short narrow street of the slum succeeds where spacious redevelopment frequently fails."

Robin Hood Gardens was to be an essay in applying such lessons to the compact high-density housing surrounded by shared green space that was then widely thought to be the future. Let us laugh along with Jenkins at some of the Smithsons' "architectural gobbledygook", but when they spoke of a "quietness that until now our sensibilities could not recognise as architecture at all" they were radically championing the subtle and timeless qualities found in undemonstrative everyday places.