COLLABORATION
One of our 2025 highlights. Codesigning and building a new installation with Ravensbourne students for their common room, made partially from recycled materials (you may spot some tiles from our LFA installation). A place to hang out, divide an overwhelming space, celebrate work across different courses, advertise student events, play chess eat lunch and hold events.
Hugely proud of what this group achieved during these workshops and the confidence gained when learning new skills! Here’s to more collaborative build projects in 2026!
COLLABORATION X DESIGN
Welcome to MY YARD.
Snapshot of our shortlisted scheme for Merton Station, in collaboration with Betty Owoo and Siraaj Mitha bringing ownership and reinterpreting home in the public realm with MY YARD.
Turning the locally known “piss alley” into the Hallway. Creating bespoke wallpaper made from icons designed with the public, mirrors and lighting to soften a dark and uninviting public entrance.
RESEARCH
Photos of successes and failures in a recent workshop series testing prototyping of sustainable brick making. Working with @ravensbourne_architecture students designed and created bricks using hemp shiv.
This process included biscuit testing of soil and different mixes as well as trialling different brick mold types.
Featured in this weeks @bigissueuk - one of five of the @thedavidsonprize longlisters!
Ahead of the deadline tomorrow please do vote for WearWork in the People’s Choice awards.
Friday Fails x Dion Barrett (He/Him)
Can you tell me about a recent mistake:
“Since transitioning to full-time freelancing, one of the biggest ‘self inflicted’ problems I’ve faced comes from the fear of not having a regular paycheque. That fear often clouds my decision making, leading me to take on far too much, just to avoid the possibility of losing out on work. As a result, I’ve often found myself overwhelmed, constantly working, and burning out. This of course has the potential to affect the quality of my work, stagnate my own business growth, and even worse, as a new Dad, not being present at home.”
What did you learn from it:
“I learned that taking on too much out of fear is damaging. It doesn’t protect you, it just drains you. Crucially however, more than anything, clients appreciate somebody who is attentive. If it takes me a few days to get back to emails and I can't deliver projects within the anticipated timeframe because I’m overworked, that could be a client lost regardless of the quality of my output.
You can also become a busy fool. Spending so much time on client work can result in completely neglecting the growth of your own business. Ironically, I create films in order to help practices showcase their value, but struggle to carve out the time to do that for myself.”
How will this help you in the future:
“What helped me was reaching out to others in my industry, and seeing how they managed demand, workload and intentionality. And in that respect, It really is important to have mentors.
Managing workload is often as simple as having the confidence to push back. Saying no is a crucial aspect of maintaining balance. Unfortunately my necessity to people-please is also hard to undo, but saying no will ultimately ensure I produce the best work for the practices I work with, whilst maintaining a healthy and sustainable work life balance. You can’t pour from an empty cup!”
Reinventing industrial heartlands as self-sustaining, self-building neighbourhoods arranged around convivial yards
WearWork, by CARD Projects, PATCH Collective, and Maria Mc Lintock. @katiefisher__ , @card.projects , @mariaemclintock , @system.of.systems , @bettsbubbles , @patch_collective_
Vote for your favourite entry to win #TheDavidsonPrize People's Choice Prize via our link in bio, supported by @Humaniseorg
16.8 million people in the UK live in old industrial towns where industries like coal, steel, and shipbuilding have declined, shedding thousands of jobs.
Sunderland's industrial downturn has left communities like Millfield behind. One of the city's most deprived wards, it faces high unemployment, low life expectancy, and a rental rate nearing 50%. Yet, with a quarter of residents born outside the UK, it remains a place of movement, adaptation, and potential.
WearWork proposes a new model of housing production, embedding mass material manufacturing within communities. On disused land along the River Wear, waste is transformed at scale into high-quality building components, creating an economy that values labour and time over capital. Industries invest directly in the housing and livelihoods of their workforce, funding the production of both materials and homes. These homes are held in a worker-owned trust, for long-term affordability and community stewardship. Residents shape their homes, gaining equity through time and effort rather than traditional finance.
Read more and see every featured idea on our website!
We are delighted to have made the longlist of the Davidson Prize 2025!
Our proposal WearWork seeks to reinvent industrial heartlands as self-sustaining, self-building neighbourhoods arranged around convivial yards.
WearWork proposes a new model of housing production, embedding mass material manufacturing within communities. On disused land along the River Wear, waste is transformed at scale into high-quality building components, creating an economy that values labour and time over capital. Industries invest directly in the housing and livelihoods of their workforce, funding the production of both materials and homes. These homes are held in a worker-owned trust, ensuring long-term affordability and community stewardship. Residents shape their homes, gaining equity through time and effort rather than traditional finance.
450 live/work homes, public workshops, and studios form a self-sustaining neighbourhood, arranged around convivial yards - crucibles for industry and social life. Taking cues from vernacular bastle houses and Wearside maisonettes, homes become sites of experimentation and innovation, feeding into a circular economy where feedback refines materials and design over time.
Friday Fails x Manijeh Verghese (she/ her)
Photo credit: Elena Andreea Teleaga
Can you tell me about a recent mistake:
Some of the biggest successes in my career so far have been born out of periods of hardship, difficulty and disempowerment – failure. While it’s fair to say that I spend time wallowing in not knowing how to pull myself out of a particular slump, it then slowly becomes a driving force for me to seek out new opportunities, be more creative and find alternative paths. In product design, objects are tested to the point of failure to determine their durability and lifespan. Why isn’t that true for our lives? To understand the true depth of our resilience and strength, we have to first experience failure to then be able to reset and find ways forward.
What did you learn from it:
We often see failure and success as two opposing states or extremes but I believe they are two sides of the same coin. In order to learn from failure, we must embrace it and understand that it is temporary. It is often a time of preparation, motivation and inspiration for what comes next. It’s also important to acknowledge the support systems that you have in place - these become essential during times of failure. The people who help to lift you back up when you are down are everything and no subsequent success would be possible or worth it without them.
How will this help you in the future: While it’s hard to always remember this, I try to remind myself of the importance of failure when I’m deep within it. We need to learn from failure in order to move past it and then succeed. It’s something we don’t talk about or share enough, which is why I love the idea behind this series. It’s too easy to hide behind the polished veneer of our seemingly success-filled lives on social media when in reality there is quite frequent and intense failure that underpins it, without which no real success would be possible.
Such a joy to share the stage with these wonderful women speaking about overcoming barriers and increasing diversity across the construction sector for Women in Real Estate. Connecting (and reconnecting) with new people always brings us energy to continue collaborating to improve our built environment!
FRIDAY FAILS X George Pope (they/them) Strategic Development Manager, MATT+FIONA // Architecture Foundation Young Trustees Co-chair
Can you tell me about a recent mistake:
As a relatively early-career professional, I don’t feel as though I have had many opportunities to fail in situations with high stakes. I’ve made many, many mistakes along the way, but they have often been easily resolvable and not very noteworthy. I’m also surrounded by teams and people who uplift me and with whom I work collaboratively, which means that failures, as well as successes are shared.
I do, however, think more and more about how scary I find the *idea* of failing. Increasingly as I take on more responsibility within my work roles, I find making decisions more difficult because of the heightened stakes that come with experience. As a result, I can become frozen in inaction.
Impostor syndrome is a real thing, and I think many of us can relate to feeling overwhelmed by it. It also makes it feel as though you have more to lose with each mistake; if you don’t believe that you deserve to be where you are, then any mistake acts as confirmation of this feeling. So rather than risking failure, it can feel easier to put off acting.
Fear of failure thus becomes its own debilitating kind of failure. Failure to try, failure to learn, failure to grow.
What did you learn from it?
Understanding what is a legitimate concern about the best way to achieve a goal and what is fear of putting a foot wrong is a continual process. I think that I am still learning to distinguish between these things, and I have the amazing people I work with to thank for that. I'm also learning to question impostor syndrome, often by talking about it more and realising how many people feel the same way.
How will this help in future?
Learning about yourself, how you work, how you process situations is invaluable in terms of making you a better team player. Taking the time to reflect about this rather than ploughing ahead and trying to do everything perfectly will hopefully mean that I can be comfortable in my mistakes. Ultimately, I hope to spend less time worrying about what to do and more time doing it!
COLLABORATION x DESIGN.
Reflecting back on the joy of collaborating on last years Pews and Perches build with @siraajmitha and the beautiful @mull.club plastic tiles for @londonfestivalofarchitecture We clad the bench in an old basketball court floor and upcycled waste plastic.
Photograph by @luke.odonovan
