Street Retrofit

Working with Civic Square in Birmingham and residents of a local street to understand entry points and local issues and opportunities alongside detailed financial and legal planning for a local transition entity encompassing solar panels, batteries and retrofit. Some of this work is published here, here and here.

Based in Ladywood, Birmingham, Street Retrofit is a joint exploration into civic climate adaptation with CIVIC SQUARE, Material Cultures, and residents of a terraced street in Ladywood. The work acts as the organising practice across a range of strategies and initiatives including; +3ºC neighbourhood, Retrofit House, ReBuilders (see associated page), and more.

This series of projects have focused on an alternative retrofit strategy beyond the current prevailing paradigm of individual home electrification and technical measures, and towards a more collective, street scale transition of the neighbourhood.

Through this collective way of working, we’re able to explore new supporting structures that can help these include; street voting and governance models, web-based tools for energy and material use simulation, shared energy systems, and the social fabric that binds them together.