Bristol Housing Festival | 19th October – 4th November 2018 | Waterfront Square
ISO Spaces are delighted to be supporting and exhibiting at the inaugural Bristol Housing Festival – an exhibition of innovative housing solutions that have been developed to tackle the housing crisis that Bristol, like many other parts of the UK, is facing.
Visitors to Bristol Housing Festival, which suitably coincides with the Global Parliament of Mayor’s Annual Summit, hosted by the Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, can take a look around one of ISO Spaces’ standardised one-bedroom container housing units. Our container conversions for housing are an innovative response to housing supply challenges, providing interim, comfortable accommodation for those facing homelessness. The shipping container homes can be placed on previously disused land, whilst the land awaits permanent regeneration by the local council. After their tenure, the container housing development can then be relocated to another site.
The innovative and cost-effective solution can be seen in action in Ealing, London. ISO Spaces designed and manufactured the largest temporary accommodation of its kind. After the successful installation of shipping container housing at Marston Court, ISO Spaces worked with Ealing Council to manufacture the 60-apartment Meath Court in Acton’s Hope Gardens. The converted container housing provides accommodation for 280 people – a proportion of the 2200 families in Ealing currently homeless and residing in temporary accommodation.
The shipping container housing developments were created using a kit of moveable and reusable parts to offer a sustainable and cost-effective interim housing solution for Ealing Council. The shipping container homes of Meath Court were completely offsite-manufactured in 24 weeks before being installed quickly and easily, with minimal additional works required on site.
What is Bristol Housing Festival?
Bristol, like many other cities in the UK, is facing a housing crisis. An ever-increasing population in conjunction with a lack of space for new homes has resulted in the demand for high-quality, affordable homes far outweighing supply. Home ownership for younger generations is unattainable as prices continue to rise, whilst the high cost of rents makes it equally as difficult for young people to move out of the family home.
Perhaps even more socially unjust, the inevitable elitism woven throughout the housing market has hit the poorest inhabitants of cities the hardest. Bristol alone has seen an explosion in the number of people who are homeless and sleeping on its streets.
Supported by Bristol City Council, the festival aims to share its thinking that such a systemic problem requires a huge cultural shift in the way housing is conceived, built and marketed. The festival, an annual event for the next five years, aims to move the thinking beyond conversations to delivery by road-testing a range of existing concepts and innovative solutions in the real world. In addition to trialling these prototypes that will help develop scalable and longer-term solutions to support local government to build houses and communities, Bristol Housing Festival is also setting out to showcase the exciting ambition and work that is already underway, including our innovative interim housing solution that has the potential to become a crucial approach for councils as they tackle their housing and homelessness challenges.
Bristol’s Mayor, Marvin Rees said the festival “is not just about homes, but about communities too, and solving wider social challenges such as social isolation and mental health issues throughout housing.”
For more information on our container housing solution, please click here to take a look at our brochure.