Live, Work and Play: Creating Communities

This week we have a change-maker who's looking at how homes and technology meet and how new technology can be introduced into the property sector in general.

After a 40-year career in social housing Matthew Gardiner is expert in the business of social landlords. He has direct experience of building new homes, managing and maintaining large property portfolios and securing institutional investment into the sector for organisations based in London, Merseyside and Greater Manchester. As CEO at Trafford Housing Trust for 14 years, he grew the organisation from its roots within a single Borough to one operating at scale across much of the NW of England.

Matt and myself talked about how public sector housing authorities need to adopt low touch, no touch technology as well as out of sector thinking to help improve housing quality and how we can look at gamification and the reward of housing data capture to help provide cheaper smart housing solutions.  

Fanyu Lin is an award-winning entrepreneur and architect, passionate about impact investing. She is the CEO of Fluxus, a construction technology company and social enterprise committed to improving quality of life through delivering affordable, sustainable and smart homes.

In this episode, Fanyu and myself talked about the use of AI-driven technology platforms in affordable homes, the industrial revolution and the reduction of operational and maintenance costs through technology.

Really pleased to have Tom Chance as a guest on the podcast! He is the Chief Executive at the National CLT Network, a national charity supporting community-led housing.

He worked for seven years at the Greater London Authority, where he developed a considerable expertise in housing and planning policy, and a strong overview of economic, policing, transport, environment and public health policy in London.

In this episode, Tom and myself talked about setting up and running a community land trust to develop homes and other assets to meet local needs.

Recent guests of the Innovators in Affordable Housing Podcast are Peter and Kirsty from Timber Design Initiatives, a company who's raison d’être is to deliver Europe-wide approaches to education, innovation and demonstration of best practice in the use of wood in architecture, design and construction through applied research collaborations with academia and industry.

Peter is an architect and director of Timber Design Initiatives (TDI) Ltd. and the author of 'New Timber Architecture in Scotland’ and ‘The Modern Timber House in the UK: New Paradigms and Technologies'. He leads the company's Mass Timber Academy and its Build Back Rural initiative to help remote rural communities build their own affordable homes using locally manufactured dowel laminated timber panels. 

Kirsty is a recent graduate from Dundee's Architecture and Urban Planning Masters unit, focusing on the contemporary perception of community in collaboration with Perth & Kinross Council. She is now part of the team at Timber Design Initiatives Ltd, actively working on a project to help solve the rural housing crisis in Scotland.

In this episode Peter, Kirsty and myself talked about how timber design and construction contribute to the technological innovation within the property development industry. We have discussed the general misconceptions of using timber as well as its advantages and most especially its positive effects on the affordable housing sector.

Instagram: @timber_design_initiatives BBR Website: https://www.build-back-rural.com/ TDI Website: https://www.timberdesigninitiatives.com MTA Website: masstimberacademy.com Email: [email protected] Call: 01315548643

Alan Marcus is the Chief Digital Strategy Officer at Planet Smart City, an innovative proptech company designing and building affordable smart projects with social and digital innovations to improve lives.

In this episode, Alan and Alex talked about creating community environments which are socially inclusive. Prioritising not the building of the "houses" but the building of communities and providing what the residents want in order for them to have good-quality living.

Matt Lesniak is a co-founder and Head of Impact & Innovation at Conscious Coliving, an impact-driven spatial and experience design consultancy for coliving developers, operators and investors. Matt is also a founding member and current Head of Community of Co-Liv, a co-founder of Coliving Insights and has worked for The Collective on their Impact and Community Experience Teams.  

In this episode, Matt and Alex talked about urban regeneration, communities and their holistic vision for coliving, one that regenerates spaces into fulfilling and purposeful needs.

Our first-ever live episode is now in our podcast library! This is an episode we did a couple of weeks back with Richard Lankshear who is the Head of Innovation and Graham Sibley, Senior Business Development Manager of NHBC.

In this episode Richard, Graham and Alex talked about all kinds of things ranging from Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) to modular design and build options and how they relate to the affordable housing sector especially as there is a rapidly growing interest among many housing builders/developers in this particular area.

Rob Stephenson, the founder of FormScore and InsideOut aims to help facilitate this change and work to help break the stigma around the discussion of mental health amongst social communities.

Through this podcast episode, Rob discussed ways to attain quality living. He raised awareness on being mentally well especially during this time of change due to the pandemic. Rob suggested having a social community and improving work-from-home setup by building a community barrier for work and home with the help of affordable and social housing.

Andy Redfearn and Rebecca Stockman are the directors of LivShare Housing and Consultancy. LivShare provides consultancy services to organisations that want to develop low-rent housing that makes use of sharing economies in a variety of ways.

In this episode, Andy & Rebecca spoke about the innovation of affordable shared living. They further talked about the different advantages and effects of co-living from public to private sectors. Lastly, Andy & Rebecca informed us about the need for shared living in this community.