What is architecture? Is it grand designs with complex structures, defying the laws of physics? Is it simple, everyday buildings that, when put together, create the urban fabric? In the mid-18th century, Laugier introduced the concept of the Primitive Hut, a structure, essentially a home, designed and built to meet the primitive man’s basic needs: shelter from the elements and nature. Any structure that meets these requirements would be considered authentic architecture. However, since then, our needs have evolved and are much more elaborate, especially when it comes to our homes. They need to provide shelter, security, thermal comfort, and space. Our homes have to be economical, environmentally friendly, and have access to the internet, among many other prerequisites. So what would the ideal modern human’s home, and thus true architecture, look like?
The Science of a Happy Home Report, carried out by Resi first in 2020 and then again in post-pandemic 2023, sought to discover exactly what elements people believed made up the ultimate happy home. The results were six prominent qualities: a home that is adaptable to meet our changing needs, a home that allows us to connect and build relationships, a home that mirrors our personality and values, a nourishing home that provides the conditions we need to thrive (i.e. air quality), a home that helps us relax, and a home that offers security and makes us feel safe. These needs, however, aren't being met for the majority of UK homes, and that's where Resi comes in.
Resi is a female-led architectural tech start-up, founded by Alex Depledge and Jules Coleman, that’s on a mission to change, democratize and have a sustainable impact on the UK residential home development market. Establishing itself as the largest home extension platform in the UK, having completed around 6,000 projects to date, it aims to demystify what is a complex process and help people create their dream home faster, cheaper, and in a more environmentally friendly way.
We had the opportunity to speak to Resi’s CEO and co-founder, Alex Depledge, about the UK housing crisis and Resi’s mission to play a key role in tackling it.
Amelia Perez Bravo, ArchDaily (APB): How was Resi born, and how is it different from the way other architecture firms work?
Alex Depledge (AD): I think I can answer the two questions in one. Resi was born because I wanted to put in a side infill in my own home, and Jules had also bought a house around that time. So we came at the problem of doing that from a customer point of view. Things like, what kind of questions do customers ask? What problems do they face? What are they looking for? And what we found when we both went through it is that architecture is not actually very accessible for the average person. What does the average person know about the construction and design of a house, how much it’s going to cost, or what the running order of everything is? All of these questions were at the forefront of our minds and they were not very well answered since a lot of the people that we spoke to in the industry approached the process from a very technical point of view. They would talk to us in jargon and we would think “What's a structural engineer?”, “What is a Bregs package?”.
Therefore, what we tried to do at the very beginning, and continue to do so, is to try and demystify the process and make it simple for customers to follow so that there's less of a burden on them to learn how the whole architectural design and construction process works. So that’s how Resi was born! It was born out of our own customer frustration, and we approached it, not from an architectural point of view because we're not architects, but by trying to solve the problem for a customer, which I think is really different from how a lot of architecture practices are set up.
I think you go into architecture because you love buildings, and architecture inhabits an interesting space at the intersection of art and science. The way buildings stand, there's a lot of maths and physics involved, but it’s also combined with this really pleasing aesthetic. If you think of the classical styles, neo, gothic, victorian – it's all very distinct and beautiful, so I think the two coming together makes it a really distinct discipline. But what it also does, at the risk of sounding a little bit critical, is that it subsumes the consumer to the will of the art, or the art comes before the actual problem itself for the people who are going to live in that space. So I believe that's how we differ. We came at this not from a love of architecture, we came at it from the mentality that the buildings that we build have to work for the people who live and work in them.
APB: Resi carried out The Science of a Happy Home Report in 2020 and again in 2023. Do you think that our basic needs for a happy home, things like space, thermal comfort, and security, have become more of a luxury that only a few can afford?
AD: First of all, I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done with the Happy Home reports, and I’m glad we re-did it this year, post-pandemic, to see how people’s wants and desires have changed because I think that what we're trying to do with Happy Homes is a very important piece of work. It’s not about just asking the question of what makes good design, but actually, what makes good design for well-being. It’s about asking ourselves what the optimum blend between public and private space in a home is, and if light really does affect your well-being or if it is actually the view from your window.
What’s been really interesting over the last three years, is seeing just how focal the home has become, not just for the people who can afford it, but also for those who can't. The home was a place where you retreated from public life, and it was this safe sanctuary where you slept and relaxed. Now it's the place where you work, where you work out, where you school your children and entertain your friends. The demands for the home have grown exponentially, so what does that mean for the way we design homes? And how can we do better?
In the UK, we go on a lot about this current housing crisis and the cost of living, and the main driver of this is the home. And it's not just a question of ‘if you can afford to buy a home’, but if you can afford to heat a home. Our housing stock causes 40% of our carbon emissions, and what that actually means is that 19 million homes out of 27 million in the UK are not fit for purpose, meaning they are not well-ventilated or insulated, or they're old. And I mean, you can go up the spectrum to the black mold scenario you see in the news, that being the worst example, but if you go all the way down to just everyday living in old homes, they may be double glazed but there's a draft under the door, etc. All of these little things mean we are using more heat in those homes to make them comfortable, and at a time like now, a lot of people are having to forego that and they're living in extremely uncomfortable homes. So I don't believe we're going to solve the housing or climate crisis by building more homes. We're going to solve it by needing to use less overall, which means taking the existing stock of houses and making sure they are fit for purpose. So that's what we're trying to play our part in going forward.
APB: In what way is Resi trying to make sure it doesn’t further contribute to the UK housing or climate crisis?
AD: The first thing is that if you tear down a house and rebuild one, you use more carbon than if you change an existing structure and make it fit for purpose. The second thing is that it is a very hard sell to someone that has a lovely house with nice wallpapers and carpets, and telling them that you're going to come in and start ripping walls and putting insulation in, heating and air vents, etc because the house is working for them as it is. So I think Resi plays a very key part between these two because when people come to us because their house doesn't work in its current guise, it's the perfect time to also see how the house is performing.
This is because, if we're already ripping out the back walls or the roof, it's a great time to put down that insulation, to improve the ventilation, to think about the windows throughout the property, to look at where they are losing heat, and to do it all in combination. We are maximizing that inconvenience to get as much out of it as possible, and it also ends up working out cheaper for the client because they are already paying for the site set-up, builders, and drawings. So overall, it's better to retrofit a house at the time you're extending or renovating, instead of doing it as a one-off task. And that's why I think Resi is the largest extender of homes and the largest home extension platform. We can play a huge role in transforming the existing housing stock of the UK.
APB: What is the biggest challenge that Resi has faced, or is facing?
AD: First of all, it's the structural lack of builders in the UK, and this is not something that just Resi faces, but that the whole infrastructure and construction projects face. The average age for a builder or construction worker has gone from 45 to 56, so they're all approaching retirement, and we're not replenishing them. And this is something that is not a consideration for a lot of young people when they leave school at 18 or uni at 21, so we just don't have the workforce. I think that is one huge problem that we don't talk about very often in the UK.
The second unbelievably big problem is the planning system. We are so desperately in need of supply-side reform in planning. Every single council has a different set of criteria, and permitted development should be quick and easy, but the councils are underfunded and under-resourced. I don't think we should go the whole hog and have zone systems, but we could learn a lot from Australia and New Zealand’s planning systems where they put a lot of zonal requirements that take out the subjectivity. We are laboring under a false sense of security, thinking that we could convert all of our brownfield sites across the UK into usable and buildable sections of land. The green belt is going to have to be used and the sooner we have that battle with the UK, the general public, and councils, the better. So I think planning is, again, one systemic problem that we face. So there are two quite big ones. The people that are going to build the houses and the people that are going to allow you to build them. So those are the two things that I’m not quite sure what Resi is going to do to solve that.
In terms of the specific problems that Resi faces, I believe access to talent is becoming harder, particularly now. We, in a way, shot down the roots from mainland Europe. If I think back to two years ago and the makeup of our architects and technicians, a lot of them were from Spain, Portugal, and Greece. Now a lot of those guys have left or they're not coming in in the first place, and that's daunting because there are only around 37,000 chartered architects in the UK. There are 150,000 in Spain and 150,000 in Italy, so we've always had to bring in talent from abroad, and that avenue has now been closed.
I think the other thing as well is that I’m just hoping there's not another pandemic, so that’s not another problem we have to face. But we're quite well set up for scale now. So growing, essentially.
APB: What things can we look out for for the future of Resi?
AD: Well, we're going to be doing more video content and out-of-house advertising which I'm quite excited about. We are doing a big brand push because Resi had a really strong brand pre-covid and then when everyone had to stay in their homes, people weren't seeing the ads on buses or tubes anymore. So a big push into rebuilding the Resi brand. Resi is also going nationwide again. Back to the southeast, back to the northwest, to serve all the areas that we used to serve before the pandemic, so we should be more visible through that too.
We are also placing more emphasis on the sustainability and nourishing elements of the home. Things like, how do we help people with ventilation and heat loss? So, really starting to weave what I like to always call a nourishing thread through the way that we design and build here. What I think is really important is not just that we give people more space but to actually help them take all of the space and make it work better for them thermally so they are reducing their bills and looking at other sources of energy in general. Just generally giving them a more sustainable way of living in the face of energy challenges and price rises.
