About Us
Social Designs is a Community Interest Company based in Cornwall, founded to bridge the gap between architectural practice and local activism.
We facilitate community-led architecture through participatory design workshops. Our program is delivered through collaborative activities with a laid back social atmosphere, reflecting what our architecture is intended to achieve.
We believe there’s a wealth of great ideas unrealised at a grass-roots level - sadly they’re often ostracised by the financial expense and competitive agendas of institutionalised expertise.
So it is, we’re ready start working before there’s a fee as we know community groups find it a lot easier to generate funding once they’ve got their dreams down on paper.
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Cornwall’s property market is increasingly removed from local life. A growing desire for second homes which sit empty for months at a time, detract from the means to meet the basic needs of local people. This architecture, plus high-end commercial developments which typically follow, often arrive from distant offices - imposed without proper care and sensitivity for the social and ecological contexts they affect.
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We create environmentally conscious community-led facilities, to defend local culture against the encroachment of frivolous luxury and reserve space for the natural splendour of our beloved peninsula to grow. We do this with the communities we belong to; enabling groups to express their influence through new and/or restored architecture, infrastructure and resources - creating a sustainable, authentic future for Cornwall.
Contact Us
Social Constructs aims to ask questions about the processes of building, working together on the construction site and creating healthy working relationships.
A happy and healthy construction team, aligned with passion for craft and materiality, will get the best out of themselves.
Any stakeholder who is looking for the best possible architectural outcome should find it obvious that ht perfect’s success encompasses the wellbeing of the team behind it.
Anyone who has worked on a construction site will know this is rarely a priority, and we have become curious about why that is and how priorities can change for the better.
We are aware that the obstacles to this do not start and end on site but much deeper in the economics of both the built environment and inequality at large.
It is however too reductive to explain this away as a money issue, without paying attention on how process and working relationships could make a difference.
It is clear that the construction site must become a critical arena, overlaid with research interests that ask fundamental questions about how things can be done better, focussing first on the holistic wellbeing of project delivery.
Our Projects
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