Community Led Housing Project in Lockleaze Gets Planning Consent!!
June 28, 2022
We are absolutely thrilled that our project for Lockleaze Neighbourhood Trust to provide 19 new homes has received planning permission from Bristol City Council! Project architect Julia Wilson has worked collaboratively with the City Council and local residents to secure this momentous decision for the area. Through a deep process of co-design with local residents we evolved a project together that was unique to their community and embodied ecological values. The images below show the entire design process of engagement workshops and how the scheme evolved.
Community Led housing projects are our passion and purpose as a practice. It is what we established the studio to work on and continues to be one of our core areas of focus and specialism. We are a team of qualified, dedicated architects, all committed to challenging, changing, and influencing the housing system we operate within.
We have a really deep understanding and breadth of experience working with a very diverse range of CLH groups; including CLT's, co-housing groups, elders co-housing, and a mix of alternative, affordable housing developments over the last decade. Our experience is that the project process is as important as the 'product', and that it holds the potential to empower everyone involved to have real agency and ownership over their scheme.
We are currently working on a range of Community Led Housing projects of different scales and types, located in Falmouth, Hartland, Plymouth, Bridport, Isle of Wight, Somerset, and our home city of Bristol for between 3 and 70 homes on a mixture of sites within urban, and rural areas. Several of these are co-housing projects; where we have worked closely with individual members to shape the designs of their homes and used a range of MMC, self-build, and self-finish as a means to deliver affordable sustainable homes.
We believe Community Led Housing projects can be exemplars for the communities within which they are located – using co-design, stakeholder engagement, and community consultation processes as integral and essential to the design process to deliver positive change and regenerative developments.
Having worked on many different Community Led Housing projects, we have also developed a deep knowledge around many of the wider challenges that these projects face, in respect of time, cost, organisational structures, sustainability, community energy, legal, and financial matters. One of our core design principles is to make it real – we want to see projects happen, and will assist with our knowledge and expertise wherever possible to do so.
Barefoot Architects' design principles are to co-design unique ecological buildings together, which minimise their environmental footprint, are in touch with their community, and physically connected to their places. Our vision is for affordable, accessible and creative zero-carbon communities designed for life to thrive.
We seek to practice architecture ethically, with vision and values. We treat clients as collaborators, working with openness, clarity and transparency. We design with materials mindfully, striving for net zero carbon with every project, looking at both embodied and operational carbon, and working within the principles of a circular economy. We believe in the regenerative potential of our work for wildlife and the life support systems of our one planet.
We work to engage with everyone impacted by our projects with empathy, and believe passionately in the health, well-being and personal growth of both our clients and our team. Our role as educators and practitioners is important to us, and we practice what we preach within our own communities, participating, leading and assisting in environmentally focussed projects.
Our culture is to be a seriously fun, friendly, and unpretentious group of people working with passion and purpose to make meaningful changes to the lives of the individuals and communities we serve. We look to apply the principles of Bioregional's One Planet Living and/or Building with Nature's toolkit to projects, and believe that it is worth considering the entire surface area of a site and buildings for their potential for growing and supporting life – creating biodiverse habitats, space for perennial vegetables, an edible landscape, by applying principles of permaculture, agro-forestry, forest gardening; all working to create climate resilience.