Bristol to host five-year ‘Festival of Housing’

Bristol will host a new five-year housing festival aimed at producing innovative solutions to the UK’s housing crisis.

The launch event will be an exhibition running from October 19 to November 4 in Bristol’s Waterfront Square, featuring full-size concept houses and scale models.

Supported by Bristol City Council, Bristol and Bath Regional Capital and the Shaftesbury Partnership, the launch event will be the start of a longer-term festival which will run for five years, where it is hoped new communities will be funded, commissioned and built across the city.

Organisers say the festival will act as an ‘incubator’ to road-test in a real-world scenario both existing concepts and innovative solutions designed to ‘accelerate the delivery of quality, affordable housing.’

Modular ‘ZED Pods’ will be on display at the exhibition, with the company who produces them saying they can separate housing provision from land prices using air rights over car parks.

They say that by removing the cost of land from the price of housing they could put to use the UK’s 200,000 city centre car parking spaces.

The festival will also highlight work that is already underway in the city through partnerships, innovators, community groups and pioneers.

Earlier this month Bristol City Council announced they will be setting up their own housing company.

They said the company will give the council greater influence over what is built in the city, which would help ‘ensure developments provide good quality homes within mixed neighbourhoods that best suit the needs of the local community.’

Jez Sweetland, project lead for the Bristol Housing Festival explained that the festival is inspired by the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Crystal Palace.

‘There is much to celebrate and showcase in the city concerning housing and community development,’ he said.

‘It is the intention of the Bristol Housing Festival to highlight both the ambition and work that is already underway through partnerships, innovators, community groups, visionaries and pioneers, and also to bring new ideas and new affordable housing and community into reality.’

Bristol City Cllr Paul Smith added: ‘We are at the beginning of a revolution in housing design and construction. The Festival will make Bristol the centre of that revolution, not just for the UK, but possibly for the world.’

Read more about the festival here.