Building Skills: A Material Strategy for Birmingham and the West Midlands
Building Skills is a new report by Material Cultures that situates social and ecological possibilities for the retrofit of the Neighbourhood Public Square site within the material and productive landscape in which it sits.
This is the result of an ecoregional mapping study of Birmingham and the West Midlands, and a range of open learning collaborations between Material Cultures and CIVIC SQUARE, such as Material Matter[s]: A Skills For Transition Learning Journey, together indicating key sites in our region that offer a variety of material opportunities to be explored together.
Building Skills is a newly commissioned report that directly informs the development and co-production of the Neighbourhood Public Square.
Through the Neighbourhood Public Square we are working to manifest regenerative neighbourhood civic infrastructure for the long-term through the deep retrofit of an ex-industrial site in Ladywood, Birmingham UK, designed to demonstrate and distribute the spaces, tools, and resources necessary for people to be at the forefront of their own social, economic and ecological transitions.
As a demonstrator for many layers of regenerative redesign around land stewardship, finance, governance, as well as building design, construction and retrofit, the Neighbourhood Public Square is deeply informed by histories of the commons, regenerative design principles and governance models that are distributive by design. To put it another way, every facet of its design seeks to honour the reciprocal interrelation of land, materials, and people.
Through this all-important reimagination of our foundational relationships at both local and global scales, we are intentionally preparing for the risks and opportunities that UK urban neighbourhoods are already facing and will continue to increasingly face over this century due to climate and ecological breakdown under a high emissions scenario, as outlined in 3ºC Neighbourhood, the likely result of which will be a rise in average global temperature of 3ºC.
At the time of writing a red weather warning has been issued by Met Office as Storm Darragh hits the UK, with millions told to stay at home amid widespread ‘danger to life’ and more than 170,000 homes left without power. Described by UK media as ‘rare’, we recognise the deep need for collectively building a different kind of skills base to support necessary adaptation as our climate changes, but also the mitigation of the effects to come from even tiny degrees of warming, as extreme weather events such as this will become increasingly commonplace. Whilst rapid adaptation will be necessary, a more fundamental shift in our relationship with materials, construction, and the built environment is critical.
Many would say talking about a 3ºC world doesn’t even bare thinking about, and we would wholeheartedly agree, because its effects would be so disastrous. Unfortunately this has become a necessary reality to understand, and to face the potential threats of together. However, this work is absolutely not an acceptance or endorsement of that future, and this report continues our standpoint of preparing for the worst, whilst designing for the best, most generative futures.
This report by Material Cultures represents an essential next step in the design methodology of the Neighbourhood Public Square to meet this ambition through the mapping of materials, manufacturers and processes that can support our site to embody and work towards social, ecological, and material justice in and beyond our neighbourhood. These findings will directly inform the material palette, participatory activities and productive capacity of the Neighbourhood Public Square’s physical infrastructure — particularly the Neighbourhood Microfactory and Materials Lab. As introduced in the Physical Infrastructure Design chapter of our wider Neighbourhood Public Square publication, the Microfactory is planned as an early phase of the wider site retrofit, as we give priority to activating the buildings as a working site for the neighbourhood.
Alongside our own direct work ahead to take these findings off the page, onto site and into our neighbourhood(s), in commissioning this report we also extend it as a direct contribution to the commons for many people organising and building in our wider ecoregion. We acknowledge there are no perfect solutions, and we invite you to share in the tensions and contradictions surfaced here, alongside what feels illuminated and abundant. Lots has been included, but we recognise that, inevitably, plenty will get missed out too, and the findings are not static.
We humbly share this work alongside our visionary partners Material Cultures in this moment as part of our ongoing collective learning and building together, in the hope that others are better supported to navigate the interdependencies of achieving material justice, in which we know there is a role for everyone.
Neighbourhood Public Square Site | Ladywood, Birmingham
“As we face up to material constraints, we’ll need to discover new immaterial abundances. The degrowth of material, energy and extraction could be accompanied by a growth in care, maintenance, participation, collective intelligence, new forms of logistics and other immaterial assets.”
Framed by structural work towards material and environmental justice, this report is an exploration of the idea of using a building site as a platform for skills dissemination and learning, interrogating how infrastructures for neighbourhood co-stewardship, bio-based building skills and knowledge exchange can be designed into, and staged as integral parts of, the process of retrofitting and assembling a new structure.
For us, at the heart of the Neighbourhood Public Square and the urgent work ahead to physically co-build, co-steward, and demonstrate new possibilities with many people, this is a very live question of how our work alongside neighbours, peers and partners can continue to be as connected together as possible for maximum co-benefits at a range of scales.
Over the last year we have reorientated and stepped into the next stages of tangible design for Neighbourhood Public Square from all we have been learning together with our peers and neighbourhoods for over a decade, from the Neighbourhood Doughnut to activating on our streets to reimagine retrofit. As we began work alongside visionary collaborators to build our design team and wider ecosystem in this demonstrator, the most recent part of the journey to here brings together learnings from Material Cultures’ research in Birmingham and the West Midlands, as well as all that has been generated through the next stages of learning in the open, such as co-hosting Material Matter[s]: A Skills For Transition Learning Journey.
1. Dreadnought Tiles and Ketley Brick Company, Dudley
2. Cannock Chase Forest
3. The Wood Shack, Sutton Coldfield
“The way we work has to change completely, as well as the materials we work with.”
— Summer Islam, Material Cultures
Material Matter[s]: A Skills For Transition Learning Journey was initiated as a hands-on collective learning journey to fundamentally reimagine the relationship between materials and the systems that govern their production, distribution and end-of-life through a lens of material justice.
Building on our previous Doughnut Economics Peer-To-Peer Learning Journeys, Ecological Health in Neighbourhoods, and more, Material Matter[s] was hosted as a partnership between CIVIC SQUARE and Material Cultures. 27 peers, including artists, architects, makers and community organisers, took part over 6 months in 2024, developing practical skills in working with natural materials to be put into practice in homes, streets and neighbourhoods in different contexts across Birmingham and the UK.
The journey was devised of four workshops, each focused on deepening our collective understanding of the material matters of different bio-based materials: straw, clay, timber, mycelium and soil. Together we learnt about the systems and ecologies within which they exist from a range of practitioners including Material Cultures, Annabel Cameron-Duff of The Roundhouse Company, Mykor, and Black Rootz, as well as the practical roles they can play and the skills we need as we transition the built fabric of our neighbourhoods in service of ecologically safe and socially just futures.
These sessions were hosted across the Neighbourhood Public Square site in Ladywood, Dreadnought Tiles and Ketley Brick Company in Brierley Hill, Cannock Chase Forest, and JERICHO’s The Wood Shack in Sutton Coldfield, deepening our relationships with these sites in the region, all of which are included as material precedents in Section 3 of the Building Skills report.
Neighbourhood Public Square Site | Ladywood, Birmingham
As part of the Neighbourhood Public Square Co-creation Week, on Thursday 5th September 2024, we celebrated the the culmination of the Material Matter[s]: A Skills for Transition Learning Journey and launched a draft of this Building Skills report at the Material Matter[s] Market Day. A lively activation of the Neighbourhood Public Square site, the day included a material market of suppliers, manufacturers and educators from across the region, activities to get hands on with bio-based materials, inspiring discussions, screenings and the learning journey showcase.
This was an opportunity to share, discuss and physically test how this report supports the material strategy for Neighbourhood Public Square, its place within existing and emergent supply chains, and what learnings this surfaces for many people, organisations, policy makers and more across the wider region, taking the findings off the pages and into the commons.
1. Neighbourhood Public Square Site — Ladywood, Birmingham
2. James Cond Centre (University College Birmingham)
3. Grand Union’s Common Field — Digbeth, Birmingham
From there, open access Material Matter[s] Mini Series sessions also exploring clay, straw, timber, soil and mycelium continued natural material explorations in our neighbourhood and across the city throughout the year. This allowed us to learn together with more people from our own neighbourhood in Ladywood, those without any previous experience of working with bio-based materials, and with others who had been unable to commit to the (heavily oversubscribed) 6 month learning journey.
This also created further connections across different entry points in our work, with open workshops happening through our monthly Neighbourhood Supper Clubs, weekly Neighbourhood Trade School classes, The B16 Lunch, and sessions at The Floating Front Room, such as willow weaving and clay painting for children and families in half term.
Utilising the findings of this report, the Material Matter[s] Mini Series also intentionally expanded our connections to other sites in the region such as University College Birmingham’s James Cond Building (home of Centre for Sustainable Construction) and Grand Union’s Common Field canalside site in Digbeth, both which are identified as precedents for retrofit, materials and skills across Sections 3, 4 and 5 of the Building Skills report.
1. Fircroft College — Bournville, Birmingham
2. The Enterprise Centre — University of East Anglia Research Park, Norwich
3. KWMC The Factory — Knowle West, Bristol
Continuing work alongside further education colleges in the region more closely, the Re:Builders programme is a fully-funded six-month learning programme for builders and makers from small to medium businesses in the West Midlands looking to better understand how their sectors can rapidly adapt to and navigate the material and climatic futures we face.
Supported by Innovate UK, and powered by Fircroft College, since October 2024 the programme is being delivered in collaboration between CIVIC SQUARE, Dark Matter Labs and Material Cultures. The programme seeks to develop new approaches to providing bespoke training and innovation support to businesses across a range of key sectors in the region.
“We are here in the consequences and the wake of being out of proportional size with the planet, with each other. How do we practice moving into being right-sized?”
— Farzana Khan, Retrofit Reimagined 2023
Together, this ongoing material exploration with many people in place alongside a range of partners has and will continue to feeding into how we apply the Design Principles of the Neighbourhood Public Square, including how we are intentionally designing ‘with’ the ecoregion that we are a part of for as many interventions as possible: from the supply of food and textiles, to the production and materiality of the built fabric.
In order to produce this report, Material Cultures have carried out in-situ, in-person research over a 6 month period, including: site visits to, and interviews with three different construction colleges; regional sites of extraction and local industry stakeholders, including forests and mills, and clay quarries and brick factories, but also grain network members and timber reclamation yards; interviews with and site visits to members of Birmingham’s largest community-led retrofit initiative Retrofit Balsall Heath; and visits to local design precedents for the Neighbourhood Microfactory, including makerspaces and construction colleges.
Employing an ecoregional mapping methodology, this report demonstrates a practical, situated interpretation of retrofit as a site to reimagine the production of transitional material flows and social patterns, reaffirming ties between the material, the building, and the ecoregion, while devising building systems and processes that unlock neighbourhood stewardship.
To identify and grow the regenerative material networks and systems that will support the Neighbourhood Public Square, the research presented in this report cuts across the key contexts of West Midlands through three interconnected layers:
- Material — extraction and material supply chains
- Skills — manufacturing and skills base
- Retrofit — existing retrofit initiatives
Together these point to possible opportunities to densify networks for material and environmental justice, at interlocking scales and across sectors, during these early stages of the Neighbourhood Public Square.
Framed by structural work towards material and environmental justice, the following material strategy outlines the idea of how building sites can be designed as a platform for skills dissemination and learning, interrogating how infrastructures for neighbourhood relationships, bio-based building skills and knowledge exchange can be designed into, and staged as integral parts of, the process of retrofitting and assembling a new structure.
1 | Material Matrix
As a practice, Material Cultures’ research has led them from the construction site to the factory and from there to the woodland, farmland and quarry from which our materials are extracted. This research has brought into sharp focus the social, environmental, land use and biodiversity impacts of material extraction and production. Globally, the built environment and infrastructure sector are driving 30% of all species loss within the ongoing, anthropogenic sixth mass extinction event. Resource depletion within a linear economy pushes the extractive frontier ever further, worsening contamination and destruction of life.
Due to the complexity and scale of global supply chains today, the sites of extraction for contemporary construction materials tend to be far removed from the building site. The human and environmental impacts of extraction at the sites where it takes place, and the knock-on effects of pollution along the material value chain, are not sufficiently scrutinised or understood.
As part of this report, Material Cultures has developed a Material Matrix of natural and low embodied carbon construction materials that could be used in the refurbishment of the Neighbourhood Public Square. The materials that are documented have been sourced through the ecoregion mapping process outlined in Section 3 of the report, as well as through stakeholder engagement and interviews, building on Material Cultures’ existing material palette, and measures their impacts along three key indicators: embodied carbon, cost, and distance travelled to point of use.
The Material Matrix aims to put forward a series of material recommendations and an open-source, easy-to-use tool for materials specification, presenting the information with consideration of a variety of factors and metrics beyond carbon. The tool, intended to be activated as part of wider neighbourhood participation to begin processes of collective governance, will support open deliberation, literacy development and collective decision-making around how and why which materials are selected. Critically, the intention here is to begin to break down the way materials are specified, thinking beyond embodied carbon, which is often measured in kgCO₂e or in global warming potential (GWP). Comparing materials beyond their properties and financial value, this tool is intended also to appraise environmental, social and ecological benefits as considerations for the material specification process.
2 | Site As A Classroom
Further activating the Neighbourhood Public Square Site As A Classroom will continue to introduce new skills to neighbours and wider ecosystems of individuals and organisations, in the applications, uses, and impacts of bio-based materials, as part of all that we need to collectively learn, decide, and practice around how it is designed, built, stewarded and financed.
As we transition from early open co-design and experimentation over the past 5 years, to beginning the deep retrofit of the site together in the years ahead, the intention is for every development and operating phase to act as an open, inclusive, and collective space for our team, partners, neighbourhood, and wider national and industrial scales to learn from the ongoing demonstration of the Neighbourhood Public Square in real time.
As a working site, it will continue to be an active evolving demonstrator for its lifetime and beyond for all who live, work, visit, play, learn and grow here, as well as what we can demonstrate and make possible for many other neighbourhoods around the world together, for future generations to take further. This also involves postures of humility and openness to what the site, ecoregion, neighbourhood, peers and precedents can continue to teach us, with near limitless potential opportunities to share and learn.
A potential site for partnerships with local institutions (see Section 4.2), this strand of work in particular will build on Neighbourhood Trade School so far, including Skills For Transition, Material Matter[s] and Re:Builders. With the construction industry making up 12% of all employers in the West Midlands, there is an opportunity to further utilise the Neighbourhood Public Square as a means to bridge the low carbon skills gap and initiate impactful dialogue with the construction sector, which has the potential to yield vast social and ecological value at a regional and planetary scale.
by Somewhere / Uniform Group
3 | Neighbourhood Microfactory and Materials Lab
As part of the Neighbourhood Public Square, the Neighbourhood Microfactory and Materials Lab will provide a shared access makerspace and Skills For Transition school for learning experiences around making, repairing, recycling and the hands-on retrofit our homes and streets together, as part of wider movements of practice and demonstration.
The Neighbourhood Microfactory will provide space, tools and resources to support local makers, builders and neighbours from all walks of life to connect with transition skills and materials. These spaces will enable the Neighbourhood Public Square to operate as a practical hub for neighbourhood making and organising, enhancing productive capacity; embedding regenerative knowledge and skills; and building the pathways towards both local adaptation and mitigation. Tool libraries and material stores will also support the wider Neighbourhood Public Square functions of lending and enabling circulation, designing to (re)distribute resources.
The retrofit of the Depot building of the Neighbourhood Public Square site into the Neighbourhood Microfactory and Materials Lab (see Section 5 of the report) will use a material palette derived from the Material Matrix, and is identified as an opportunity to drive cultivation of both local material supply chains and the skilled labour force needed to deliver retrofit with carbon-negative, regenerative and circular materials. The project has received core funding from EU’s INBUILT research fund for decarbonising construction (see Section 2.3). This proposal leverages this opportunity to use this building project as a live and evolving training setting for regenerative approaches to design and construction.
These spaces were prioritised in the deep retrofit phasing to establish the Neighbourhood Public Square as a working site at the heart of the neighbourhood as soon as possible. In addition to the early provision of vital neighbourhood civic infrastructure, the creation of the Microfactory and Materials Lab will further enable regenerative procurement methods and practices to complete the later phases of the site retrofit.
“It’s really important to remember the radical hope and intent that infused what our places came to be in the first place, because it’s those resources and that imagination that we’ll need to lean into again.”
—Melissa Mean, What if the power and resources to build our neighbourhoods were in community hands?
Each of these three layers seeks to overcome a different systemic barrier to the adoption of regenerative practices, by improving understanding of, and access to, regenerative, bio-based, and lower-impact materials; providing training toward a workforce able to build with them; and generating employment opportunities within regenerative economic models.
As we continue working openly towards co-building the Neighbourhood Public Square in Ladywood, Birmingham UK together, we invite you to join us in exploring bio-based materials for building and retrofit and many other skills for transition, considering our site as a classroom, with these processes of learning, making and sharing together just the beginning of a much longer journey ahead.
To explore the material, skills and retrofit layers of this research further, and meet the amazing people, places, and organisations bringing them to life, we encourage you to explore the Building Skills report in full here.
→ Building Skills: A Material Strategy for Birmingham and the West Midlands by Material Cultures
If you are seriously interested in taking the questions, possibilities and work forward together from this report and 3ºC Neighbourhood, as outlined in Endowing The Future and Physical Infrastructure Design with bold investment and re-distribution of wealth, please get in touch at info@civicsquare.cc for the full Neighbourhood Public Square proposal.
Additional Materials
→ 3ºC Neighbourhood — March 2024
→ Physical Infrastructure Design — March 2024
→ Retrofit Reimagined — 2023
→ Mosaic Landscape by Material Cultures — 2023
→ The Construction Material Pyramid by Centre for Industrialised Architecture (CINARK)
→ The Embodied Biodiversity Impacts of Construction Materials by Expedition Engineers — November 2023
→ The System Challenges to Retrofit by Dark Matter Labs — April 2021
Wider Proposal
Building Skills is a connected report of the Neighbourhood Public Square proposal co-authored and co-built by CIVIC SQUARE, alongside named partners, collaborators and neighbours, in 2024.
Further chapters of the Neighbourhood Public Square proposal will be shared over the next few months. These include:
↗ 01 | An Invitation
↗ 02 | Key Principles
↗ 03 | 3ºC Neighbourhood
↗ 04 | Ladywood Climate Study
↗ 05 | Doughnut As A Compass
↗ 06 | Our Track Record
↗ 07 | Physical Infrastructure Design
↗ 08 | Radical Precedents
↗ 09 | Endowing The Future
↗ 10 | Investment Ask
↗ 11 | Team & Governance
↗ 12 | Call To Action
This report is proudly authored by Material Cultures with Sara Pereira, with our particular thanks extended to the following people:
Contributors
- Summer Islam
- Daria Moatazed-Keivani
- Shreya Sarin
- CIVIC SQUARE
Graphic Design
- Villalba Studio
Illustrations
- Material Cultures
We also give our deep gratitude for the following additional contributors:
- Architecture 00
- Scott Osborne, Forestry England’s Cannock Chase Woodland
- Paddy Harrop, Andy Powers and Carolyn Marshall, Central England Forest District
- John Adams and Arthur Jevons, Construction College Midlands
- Alastair Holding, Dreadnought Tile and Ketley Brick Co. Ltd
- Mel Lenehan, Fircroft College
- Jo Capper, Grand Union
- Damian Carter and Shaun Hall, Ibstock Brick
- Jo Moreton, Moreton Wood
- John Christophers, Retrofit Balsall Heath
- Debbie Ward, The Reuse Hub Wolverhampton
- Tom Gidlow, University College Birmingham
- Adrian Viner, Upper Elms Farm Sawmill
- Geoff Henderson, Urban Hax
- Ben Phillips, West England Forest District
- Jon Owens and Lucy Watkins, The Wood Shack
About Material Cultures
Material Cultures is a not-for-profit architecture studio bringing together design, research and strategic thinking to support the shift toward a post-carbon built environment. They provide design services, undertake hands-on construction and refurbishment projects, and work with public, private and third sector organisations interested in developing and delivering a regenerative, low-carbon built environment. Material Cultures are part of Phoenix Lewes, a housing development that is pioneering the use of bio-based materials at its scale.
The studio has published several internationally-acclaimed research reports that chart barriers and opportunities, and propose sets of actions, to enable widespread material transitions across all steps of the construction value chain, from production and extraction to disposal. Their book Material Reform: Building for a Post-Carbon Future examines the dominant design practices of our time, and maps out key steps for a shift to a bio-based material palette.
Material Cultures’ work to promote systems change is driven by practice-based research, and their collaborations with student cohorts at UAL and ETH Zurich seeded practical investigations and material experimentation, informing and transforming their practice throughout the years.
