Ecological Citizens: The Wild House – making homes and habitats for people and nature

The Wild House is a ‘regenerative retrofit’ of a social house ‘fitted out’ with innovative objects and ecological experiences that connect inhabitants to the myriad of other species dwelling in the landscape from where its materials are sourced.

The ‘Wild House’ location sits within the UK’s only urban Biosphere region and seeks to give agency to everyday people to co-define regenerative futures that better connect people and wider nature. It tests the agency of prototype products that are augmented with playful, sensorial technologies that ‘bring to life’ the relationships between every day, ‘material things’ and the wider natural world from which they are derived.

We call this interconnected network between people, products, and the nature of the place an ‘Ecology of Things’ (EoT). We are applying this retrofit to the established Brighton ‘Wastehouse’ venue on its 10th anniversary into the ‘Wild-House’ to produce an open-house ‘show home’ experience and a ‘Wild Workshop’ maker-space to reduce barriers for public and stakeholder engagement with regenerative design and participation in nature-recovery strategies.

Research questions include:

Design and experience:
•How can regenerative resources, objects, and interfaces forge meaningful, educational, and joyful relationships between people and nature, as part of an Ecology of Things (EoT’s)?
•Can these kinds of interactions support greater material literacy and eco-logical understanding in diverse public communities, stakeholder, and service provider sectors?
•What design and resource specifications best inform the provision of ‘social homes’ for considerate ancestors of humans along with all living beings?
•What is the feasibility, desirability, and acceptability of regenerative materials and products in the homes, lives, and aspirations of everyday people?

Economic and ecological:
•Can nature-prioritised products play a role in mass social housing supply chains, or are they only to be accessible within niche fringes of design culture or to a rarefied, wealthy few?
•How might regenerative resourcing methods support the social housing providers to deliver on multiple expectations and legislation for carbon reduction, local employment and Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRS), Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), and human health metrics?

The ‘Wild House and Wild Workshops layer participatory activity, supporting social housing users, local government providers, and the wider public by enabling opportunities to explore, evaluate, co-create, and deploy everyday experiences of ecological citizenship.