‘Retrofit is seen as really alienating. We’re trying to blow that apart’

Episode 57. AJ Climate Champions with Hattie Hartman and Rachael Owens. 

Melissa Mean from community land trust WeCanMake explains how a community-led approach in Bristol is tackling the housing crisis.

‘What if the power and resources to make good homes were in the hands of our communities? What if you literally put the tools in people's hands to design and make your own homes?’ asks Mean. For over a decade, WeCanMake has been doing exactly that, developing a bottom-up approach to ‘gentle densification’ in Bristol that builds social infrastructure and community wealth.

WeCanMake is pioneering a new approach to housing delivery on the Knowle West estate, an interwar housing estate of 5,000 homes in south Bristol. At its heart is an opt-in scheme whereby eligible social housing tenants gift a ‘microsite’ from their garden to someone with a housing need to build a home in their back garden. The components for the houses are cut to size by local residents in a neighbourhood micro-factory equipped with laser cutters and 3D printers and delivered to site for assembly.

The project started small with two prototype single-storey affordable homes now complete, two in planning and two more in the pipeline. Mean estimates that this approach could be rolled out in similar neighbourhoods across the UK to deliver more than 30,000 homes with just a 3% increase in density.

In this episode, Mean also describes current work with Mikhail Riches to explore the spatial transformation of Knowle West’s three-bed one-bath homes into four-bed two-bath houses. 

Working with Waugh Thistleton, WeCanMake is now tackling larger sites such as small car arks and derelict garages and developing a kit of parts for low-rise buildings. Mean describes the multiple challenges of obtaining approvals for the use of bio-based materials.

‘We lean into the power and the joy of small. Knowle West and other neighbourhoods like it, can be the future of housing,’ says Mean.

For show notes and to catch up on all AJ Climate Champions episodes, click here.