FLEX - Flexible Dwellings for Extended Living

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This project looks into the future of our homes and explores the potential for adapting our dwellings to deal with the pressures of 21st century living - an ageing population, increasing atomization of the family, expensive housing, environmental targets, spiralling energy costs, and the risk of social isolation. These challenges suggest opportunities for collaboration between communities of research, practice and occupants who wish to explore configurable spaces, flexible materials, green living, and pervasive media. To harness this energy, we explore the boundaries of private and public living, involving the communities of Newcastle and Dundee in co-design workshops that focus on how communities might dwell more socially to better serve companionship, resource sharing and social resilience. We target people in their 40s to 60s, for whom retirement is on its way, to identify their interests and values and assess how retro-fitting a generation of homes could work to increase sociality.We will run a specialist workshop for architects, designers, planners and materials experts to discuss the innovations that are possible in fitting up homes for different life stages and making communal living more possible. Materials prepared following this event and incorporating the learning will be used in community workshops in Newcastle and Dundee, to be stimulus for collaborative designing of future homes. Through this work we will explore the boundaries of acceptability and affordability, what local priorities would be and how far innovations can be imagined working in ordinary homes in Scotland and England. Through this process, we will come to learn both what would be welcomed in households in Scotland and England, and also some insight into methods of engaging households in making such changes.The project discoveries will be captured in a blog, using video, and presented in an exhibition mounted in the two chosen areas. Feedback from these sources will go into the final evaluation of what is possible and desirable in modifying existing homes to accommodate a more socially resilient and supportive lifestyle.