Imagining regenerative retrofit

In France, existing buildings represent nearly 30% of carbon emissions. The lack of thermal performance is impacting lower income residents in particular, with high energy bills in winter and overheating in summer. Surveys show a mismatch between the needs of households and the type of home they live in - too big, too small, in the wrong place. Rural property markets are under pressure from ‘city people’ looking for a countryside residence making homes increasingly unaffordable for local residents. Those committed to low carbon retrofit soon discover that beyond the technical and financial realm, they’re facing social questions such as their neighbours’ needs. Retrofitting a terraced house or an apartment is a higher order challenge, if not impossible, with too many parties to agree on a long-term investment. And we’ve yet to talk about availability of trades people and materials…

It particularly concerns issues of social justice, finance, power relations, neighbourhood, ecological and social awareness, culture, belonging, habits and habitats, social and technical skills, building materials. A complex subject that goes to the heart of the values of our communities. A topic that invites us to imagine and define: How do we want to live - today and in the future? How can we use the universal need for connection as a lever for transformation around the issues of retrofit and placemaking? How can we come together in our communities to unlock this potential?

Our first port of call was to launch invites in local facebook groups and via email to a number of local stakeholders such as municipal administration, political leaders, engaged citizens and associations. The result: a lot of positive feedback but no one volunteering to come on board. Except one. A local artist working with recycled material came back with a simple message: I’m in! Our first online meeting showed the importance of learning to go with the flow and to embrace the creative potential of differing perspectives and even misunderstandings.

The idea had been to engage in a prototyping programme using the tools of theory u, being clear about our intention and open about the result. However, the prospect of running a series of ‘collective intelligence workshops’ appeared entirely uninspiring to my project partner. Instead, they saw a clear need for a tangible project to engage local people. And so the idea for ‘Ti-MX’ was born: a tiny house that travels on land and water, entirely built from natural, re-use and waste materials available in the Pays de Morlaix, constructed in a collaborative effort by a diverse group of citizens and built environment professionals. Its mission: Inviting local neighbourhoods to connect around questions of their community and housing in particular.

A promising start which left us wondering: How to engage a wider circle of residents? How to tap into the creative potential of our communities? How to make visible the different ideas residents have of our ‘Ti-MX’? How to find out which materials are readily available? We decided to develop a short questionnaire asking simple questions: What does a simple, happy life mean to you? What would you need in a tiny house to live a comfortable life? What items do you throw away on a regular basis? If you imagined your home or business as a ‘Ti-MX’, what would it look like?

What if these models could participate in a public rally to test their suitability for land and water use? What if we could organise exhibitions of these models in the different communities of the Pays de Morlaix? We invited a number of businesses and organisations to imagine and build their activity as a tiny house that rolls and floats. Over the course of the past year a number of these models have been build, which are visible at Ti-MX.bzh.