What is your project title?

Co-Building with Care: How can production relations on the building site be a catalyst for social change? How can care-based production relations be structured, tested and evidenced within contractor-led community construction sites?

Tell me about yourself:

I am a designer, maker, builder and project manager weaving a material-focused approach into collaborative practices across design, construction and education. I am Co-founding Director of both Social Designs CIC and ReCollective, and I oversee the FLINTA-led construction contractor Social Constructs. This project forms the basis of my ongoing research into construction sites as places of learning and empowerment for all bodies and abilities.

Tell me about your project:

This research asks how care-based production relations can be structured, tested and evidenced within contractor-led community construction sites. It argues that sustainable architecture must move beyond energy, carbon and performance metrics to examine the conditions of production that shape architectural outcomes: labour, hierarchy, material judgement, programme, budget, risk, inclusion, learning and wellbeing. Drawing on architecture and labour studies, feminist construction histories, eco-feminist theories of care, new materialism, maintenance and mending, the project studies alternative site cultures organised around reciprocity and material responsibility. Its empirical focus is a Cornwall-based community construction project, where participation, learning and care are explicit but still constrained by professional delivery obligations. The methodology is practice-based and qualitative, using Participatory Action Research, interviews, site observation, auto-ethnography and material experimentation with bio-based and second-hand materials. The outcome will be a care-based site protocol and situated evidence for practice, education and policy.