Homefolk

Year | 2024

Location | London, UK

Client | Homefolk CIC

Homefolk Housing UK CIC - AKA ‘Homefolk‘ - is dedicated to pioneering innovative solutions for affordable housing in the UK.

Client

Homefolk Housing UK CIC - AKA ‘Homefolk‘ - is dedicated to pioneering innovative solutions for affordable housing in the UK. A volunteer led and organised social enterprise with the mission to create a sustainable, community-driven housing model. The movement is in response to the housing crisis and promotes social well-being, adopting a cross disciplinary approach and student engagement. The project aims to create a novel holistic housing solution in the context of London’s (un)affordable housing crisis, loneliness, access to green space and social isolation.

Brief

Our Live Project Team has been tasked with investigating homefolk’s tinyhomes model, an innovative housing concept aimed at creating affordable and sustainable villages across London’s urban areas. The project looks to transform underutilised urban ‘greyfield’ sites into eco-friendly tiny home communities. The brief from homefolk was to help them progress towards their initial pilot scheme through the creation of a convincing document for councils and financial stakeholders. We began the exploration by assessing their current position while also questioning the feasibility of their scheme.

Process

We came to the realisation that homefolk were not yet at the stage to hold participation events within the live project 6 weeks timeline. Our aim, therefore, was to create a framework and accessible tools to enable Homefolk to host engagement events in the future when it would be appropriate. Along the way, we have taken the opportunity to also expand Homefolk’s network, which are key in expanding their vision and bringing the scheme to life. We expanded on homefolk’s brief and reinforced our role within their project. Outreach was also undertaken to help us and homefolk in understanding similar ways of living, allowing us to make informed decisions in the design. Our Live Project Team was therefore responsible for communicating homefolk's proposal.

Outcome

The outcomes include a document to promote discussion, design feedback document, and engagement toolkits. We were asked to collate existing information, additional research and existing design work into a coherent clear graphic style. However, in order to communicate our own reservations and questions within the project, we provided homefolk with internal feedback documents, sharing our insights and highlighting long-term considerations to assist in the project’s strategic development. The toolkits, meanwhile, were designed with flexibility in mind regarding site location, cost, and ease of reproduction - being able to fit within a portable box due to capacity and storage constraints of the client.

Credits

Student Team: 

Katharine Hanson, Ji Hao Lai, Bethany Brown, Naomi Mason, Charles Hague, Chalisa Nitithum, Saorla Hanley, Dennis Karolev, Jade Tickle, Po-Ting Chen

Mentor:

Lettice Drake