Output details

The Workhome Project

The primary output of this AHRC-funded (£225,610) KT Fellowship is a website providing open-access to a design-guide, pattern-book and precedent-database for the building type that combines dwelling and workplace (‘workhome’).

Two-way knowledge transfer was achieved through close collaboration with partners in industry Baufritz (UK) Ltd, Cazenove Architects and the Fresh Life Company. As well as the website, this resulted in two collaborative entries to architectural competitions; both were featured in public exhibitions, one made a final shortlist of three from 59 entries (www.salfordhouse4life.com). The KTF has also resulted in an ongoing research unit investigating design for home-based work, the Workhome Project.

This research has immense contemporary relevance and strategic importance. The home-based workforce is growing rapidly, globally, but we do not currently design for it at either the building or the urban scale, nor organise society around it. This KTF has developed a conceptual framework to enable this, through an analysis of the previously unidentified building type, the workhome.

This research, disseminated through website, a launch symposium and an exhibition, is impacting directly on policy. Communications between Holliss and Department of Communities and Local Government/ Downing Street identified changes to policy that could remove obstacles to home-based work. Having already lifted the ban on social tenants starting businesses in their homes, the government may implement other policy changes that facilitate home-based work as a result of this project. Holliss was invited to sit on the Advisory Group for Lord Whitty’s 2012 Inquiry into Social Housing, changing its terms of reference, and has been invited to contribute to the 2013 Farrell Review.

Holliss is currently investigating home-based work in social housing in collaboration with sociologist Dr Carol Wolkowitz and Newlon Housing Trust. She will contribute a chapter on design for home-based work in the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Families in Asia.