Thursday 18 June18.00–19.30
*Please note that this event will now take place at the Fine Art lecture Theatre, just a few steps away from the Farrell Centre.
How do housing types emerge, adapt, and decline, and how does this reflect on design standards and housing expectations?
Changes in housing types reflect changes in how people live, housing expectations, financial pressures, and the introduction of new design regulations and standards. Looking at historical and contemporary examples, the event asks what makes a housing type resilient, what causes it to become obsolete, and whether past models can be reinterpreted to meet present needs.
This event focuses on the life and death of housing types in the North East. Local models such as the Tyneside flat reveal tensions about what housing is needed, what is desired, and what is possible, shaped by cultural preferences around house types, appearance, and density, marketability, the sites available for development, property management, and changes in regulation. It also explores how corner-turning and other emerging types respond to new design, planning, and delivery challenges or standards, revealing a close connection between housing regulations, economics, and changing urban density and fabric.
Housing practitioners, architects, and researchers will reflect on the role typological innovation and thinking can play in iterative learning between projects, in the re-interpretation of established models and standards, and in shaping future housing design.
A guided tour of the Housing Standardisation: The Architecture of Regulations and Design Standards exhibition will be available at 16.30 for anyone wishing to see the exhibition before the event.
Speakers
Darren Blake is a chartered architect, urban designer and managing director of Blake Hopkinson Architecture, with over 30 years’ specialist experience delivering high-quality housing from concept to completion. His practice is centred on a command of housing typology and placemaking, that seeks to create commercially astute, design-led solutions that perform for residents, communities and clients. Darren has shaped robust house-type portfolios for both market sale and affordable housing providers, and authored practical housing toolkits that align sustainability, value, technical compliance and buildability.
Abby Cassady is a Senior Development Manager at Gentoo Group, working in affordable housing across the North East. With a background in architecture, Abby brings a design-led perspective to development, underpinned by a strong commitment to social sustainability and the role of housing in improving people’s lives. Abby’s work explores how affordable housing typologies are shaped by design standards, regulation, and viability, and how these factors influence the homes we build and their ability to support changing ways of living.
Daniel Dyer is a chartered architect, and Associate and Yorkshire Lead at the award-winning practice MawsonKerr. He has expertise in sustainable residential design. Focused on ultra-low energy principles, Daniel integrates high-performance building standards with thoughtful, contemporary aesthetics. His expertise in ecological housing ensures that projects prioritize thermal comfort and environmental responsibility, delivering innovative, future-proof homes across the North East and Yorkshire.
Nathan Sanders is a chartered architect and Senior Architect at P+HS. He is a passionate designer who combines creative thinking with technical delivery to create places that clients, communities and users can take pride in. His portfolio includes residential masterplans, a house type range for a social landlord, school extensions, commercial feasibility studies, refurbishment projects and healthcare schemes. He will be sharing insights developed promoting a range of house types for Newcastle City Council and other affordable housing provides on Tyneside. Alongside leading P+HS’ Newcastle studio, Nathan has a strong interest in placemaking, urban design and emerging technologies including augmented reality, automation in construction and artificial intelligence, and the role they can play in shaping the future of architecture and the built environment.
Lucia Alonso Aranda is an architect and researcher based in London. She is currently a researcher at the Royal College of Art, focusing on the relationships between housing, design policy, and wellbeing. From 2022 to 2025, she contributed as a researcher to the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council project “Housing Standardisation: The Architecture of Regulations and Design Standards”. She holds a BArch in Architecture and Urbanism from the Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico City) and an MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design from the Architectural Association (London), funded by FONCA-CONACYT.
Heba Sarhan is a researcher and architect registered in Egypt specialising in inclusive residential environments. Her PhD explored the home as both a personal and collective concept, identifying concepts for adaptable residential design and reuse of existing housing stock. She has since contributed to a range of projects focused on wellbeing and home adaptations, domestic retrofit, and low-carbon design. Recently, she founded Project Commonplace, a research and design practice exploring inclusive residential design, with a particular focus on DIY home adaptations and community-based housing systems.
Discussion will be chaired by Professor Rosie Parnell – Professor of Architecture and Pedagogy at Newcastle University. Her research and practice span interests in children’s spaces, co-design, family housing, schools, and creative learning through spatial pedagogy. She foregrounds the voices and experiences of young people and their families, aiming to highlight the transformative potential of co-constructed knowledge and insight. Findings from her research project At Home with Children: Learning from Lockdown offer practical, design-based routes to improved wellbeing for children and families, challenging the societal constructions of childhood underpinning mainstream housing. As a founder member of PLAYCE, Rosie has also been involved in built environment education (BEE) for children for over 20 years.
About the series
The Housing Standardisation events form part of the Housing Standardisation in the North East exhibition at the Farrell Centre. The events are organised by Dr Dhruv Sookhoo and Prof Sam Jacoby, and are supported by the Manchester School of Architecture (AHEAD) and the Royal College of Art (AHRC Impact Acceleration Account and Research Impact Development Scheme).
Image: Hartburn Walk, Newcastle by P+HS Architects
Date
Thursday 18 June
Time
18.00–19.30
Location
Fine Art Lecture Theatre
King Edward VII Building
Newcastle University
NE1 7RU
United Kingdom
Cost
Free
Booking Information
Booking via eventbrite