Students from the Bartlett School of Architecture are collaborating with three other leading UK institutions to address one of the sector’s most urgent priorities: the delivery of healthy, affordable social housing at scale
Students from the Bartlett’s Architecture MSci programme are working alongside peers from the Welsh School of Architecture, the Leicester School of Architecture and the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture to develop design-led responses that tackle housing quality, public health outcomes and long-term affordability.
The schemes will feature in a three-week public exhibition in Bloomsbury, showcasing proposals that rethink current delivery models and position healthy housing as critical national infrastructure.
The initiative is led by Murray Fraser, professor of Architecture and Global Culture at the Bartlett. “It is wonderful to see students across the country responding to our brief, with each school bringing different expertise and designs which relate to their location.
“The hope is that the exhibition will demonstrate the myriad ways that we can design better and more affordable housing in the UK and help show how crucial this is for our society”.
Exhibition to showcase next-gen housing models
A curated selection of the strongest projects from all four schools will be exhibited at 22 Gordon Street from 29 October 2026, alongside contributions from architectural practices and a housing and health research team from UCL.
The exhibition is intended to prompt industry debate, moving beyond short-term pressures to explore how better-designed homes can deliver measurable social and economic value.
Juliet Davis, professor of Architecture and Head of the Welsh School of Architecture, said: “We are delighted to be working with our students on one of the most pressing issues for architects today.
“Our students are exploring the potential for ‘dwelling differently’, focusing on quality, the experience of home as opposed to housing, and the relationship between dwellings and neighbourhoods, with designs inspired by the policy context in Wales.”
Healthy Homes for All Festival
The showcase forms part of the wider Healthy Homes for All festival, presented by the Bartlett in partnership with the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration North Thames and supported by UCLH Arts.
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