The Transforming Homes Webinar Series

A Timely and Vital Series

The Transforming Homes webinar series, running throughout June and July 2025, brings together researchers, architects, practitioners, and residents to tackle one of the biggest questions in housing today: How do we meaningfully upgrade and adapt our homes—particularly older council housing—to meet the needs of tomorrow?

Each session focuses on a different theme but is part of a broader story. The homes we’re talking about were largely built between 1920 and 1940. That’s over a century ago—and yet millions of people still live in them today. These homes are structurally solid, but not always fit for modern life. They often lack insulation, suffer from inefficient layouts, and don’t reflect how people use space in the 21st century.

This is not just about bricks and mortar. It’s about how we design for wellbeing, sustainability, community, and comfort.

Webinar 1: Design Research

Date: June 19 · 12:00 PM
Chair: Dr Steve Coombs (Cardiff University)

The first webinar dives into the design methodologies being applied to reimagine and revitalise homes built by councils between 1920 and 1940. At the centre of this approach is the concept of the charrette—a collaborative, creative design workshop that brings together residents, researchers, and designers to co-create solutions.

Hosted by Dr Steve Coombs, this session showcases how the Transforming Homes team is using Design Research as both a methodology and a mindset. The team has been working in neighbourhoods across the UK, facilitating charrettes with residents to understand their lived experience of the home, and explore new configurations that incorporate spatial redesign, bio-based materials, and low-carbon technologies.

Presentations include:

• “Charettes as a design research process” by Laura Brain

• “Emerging design catalogue” by Joel Cady and Laura Brain

• “Reflections from practice” by James Turner and Sanjukta Jitendhar from Mikhail Riches

The webinar will present early insights from the Transforming Homes Design Catalogue—a growing library of scalable design interventions grounded in the real needs and experiences of residents. These aren’t just theoretical sketches. They’re grounded, practical concepts that respond to both the physical condition of housing stock and the aspirations of the people who live in them.

Webinar 2: Co-Design

Date: July 9 · 12:00 PM
Chair: Dr Catherine Butler (University of Exeter)

If the first session is about the tools of design, the second is about the people it’s designed with—and for.

We know the statistics:

• 4% of homes in the UK suffer from damp and mould.

• 6.1% of households are in fuel poverty.

But behind these numbers are stories, families, routines, and challenges that too often go unheard.

This session, chaired by Dr Catherine Butler, centres on the importance of Co-Design—genuinely involving residents and communities in shaping the future of their homes. It challenges the traditional model of top-down retrofitting and asks instead: What happens when we co-create housing solutions with the people who live there?

Expect a rich set of case studies and insights into how Co-Design can:

• Reveal assumptions that may be baked into policy and design decisions

• Shift the focus from technical compliance to lived experience

• Enable better long-term outcomes by embedding ownership and understanding in the process

The session will also address the challenges of Co-Design: managing expectations, timing engagement correctly, and embedding it meaningfully into often complex retrofit or regeneration programmes.

This isn’t just about making homes better—it’s about making the process fairer, more inclusive, and ultimately more successful.

Webinar 3: Scaling Up

Date: Jul 16 · 12:00 PM
Chair: TBC

The third and final session in the series looks to the future. We’ve heard about the design tools and the human side of transformation—but how do we take what works and scale it up?

How can we move from successful pilots and local charrettes to city-wide strategies or national programmes that transform tens of thousands of homes?

While the description for this webinar is still forthcoming, we expect it to explore:

• How localised design learnings can be standardised and replicated across geographies

• What a national ‘pattern book’ or design catalogue for housing retrofit might look like

• The role of policy, funding, and cross-sector collaboration in delivering retrofit at scale

• How communities can remain active partners in design, even as programmes scale

In the context of the UK’s net zero goals, the urgency to act at pace is real. But if we move too fast without learning the lessons from design research and co-design, we risk delivering solutions that don’t stick.

This webinar will consider how to strike the right balance: standardising without flattening diversity, scaling without losing sight of what makes a house a home.

Why This Matters Now

Housing transformation isn’t just a technical challenge—it’s a social one, a cultural one, and a deeply human one. The Transforming Homes webinar series brings that complexity to the surface and offers a hopeful, grounded, and inclusive approach to what’s possible.

We’re proud to support Cardiff University and the wider Transforming Homes consortium in promoting these vital conversations.

If you’re a housing professional, architect, policy advisor, community group, or just someone who believes in better homes for future generations—these webinars are for you.