Joint winners in the HM Government organised initiative set up to look for solutions to a critical problem in creating sustainable communities at substantial volume to deal with the acute housing shortage. We collaborated with a number of industry leading consultants in a team including, Igloo, Elliott Wood engineers, Useful Projects, Expedition Engineering, Cast Consultancy and Landsmith Associates the scheme was developed over two stages of the competitive process.

Our +Home scheme developed ideas on how the home might be procured and constructed in a bespoke but scalable way. Building homes that are flexible, adaptable and create a sense of community with sustainability and biodiversity hard wired in from the outset. The homes allow density by removing cars to periphery and therefore are safe, inclusive and fun places to live and grow up.

+Home helps communities to build green, walkable, vibrant neighbourhoods themselves, bypassing traditional housebuilders. Instead of standard house designs on soulless housing estates, +Homes can be community-led and support self-build homes that people can design themselves. +Homes are simple to build, with flexible, affordable frames and components, and are climate friendly to make and run. +Home has been independently assessed as exemplary by leading experts for the Home Quality Mark, Building with Nature, Building for a Healthy Life, HomesPlus and HAPPI. +Home uses disruptive innovations to transform the market with digital design, manufacturing and onsite assembly under the cover of a Site Build Barn.

More on the competition HERE

This housing prototype was developed for a RIBA Journal competition looking into the potential for Norbord OSB as a product for creating affordable housing. Working with the material our proposal pushed the material in terms of providing shelter, structure and form within a 4.8×4.8m module that allowed for interlocking units.

The way the units tessellate presents a private space available to each unit proving a density of 115 units per hectare. We chose a brown field site in Byker to show how the units could be planned forming a new community complex on unused plots of land. CNC techniques are utilised to give minimal waste and allow construction on site by relatively unskilled labour.

Our design went on to win the competition with discussions ongoing to develop the prototype for affordable housing

Awards

Winner RIBA Journal Habitat Award

This project looked at the abject poverty in the outskirt of the Angolan capital where many thousands of families arrive to seeking a living. In 2010 the situation was verging on a humanitarian crisis with mega slums developing on road sides with poor sanitation and quality of life for many. The project brief asked to look at construction techniques and the way in which the home works in this part of the world.

Our solution is constructed from adobe bricks, easily available and can be made from the available earth on site with a lightweight roof promoting a passive cooling and thermal mass. The curved form is derived from the vernacular round houses found throughout western Africa; elongating and opening the form provides a semi private courtyard space at the threshold and private shaded courtyard to the rear using the irregular non tessellating form to present positive voids between neighbouring buildings.

Low in energy use and very cheap to construct, our proposal is hoped to give an alternative life changing “vernacular” home.