New affordable housing exhibition at the Farrell Centre
Manchester School of Architecture, is co-curating an exhibition at the Farrell Centre, to explore how architectural practices and their clients use housing standardisation to achieve quality, affordable housing in the North East of England.
Dr Dhruv Sookhoo, Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Urbanism at Manchester School of Architecture, is co-curating an exhibition at the Farrell Centre, to explore how architectural practices and their clients use housing standardisation to achieve quality, affordable housing in the North East of England.
The exhibition will feature a series of co-produced case studies of current housing projects that reveal how house types and related design guidance are developed and adapted during the design process to meet mandatory national standards and their local interpretations, promote good practice standards, and respond to local housing markets and preferences.
Dhruv is a member of the MSA’s Built Heritage Research Group, MSA’s Knowledge Transfer Partnership Lead at Manchester School of Architecture, and leads MSA’s Dwelling and Urbanism Urban Laboratory. This working exhibition is part of an ongoing research project with Professor Sam Jacoby and his team at the Royal College of Art, which is developing new understanding about how English housing associations create and implement approaches to design governance across their housing programmes.
The exhibition and events series are jointly funded by Research Impact Development Scheme (RCA) and AHEAD (Manchester Met). Contributors include Blake Hopkinson Architecture + Design, Gentoo Group, IDPartnership, JDDK Architects, Karbon Homes, MawsonKerr Architects, P+HS Architects and Thirteen Housing Group.
“Housing and its quality are widely recognised as fundamental to our wellbeing and social welfare, yet there is surprisingly little agreement on how housing quality should be defined or measured. Our international study shows that housing outcomes vary considerably because they are shaped not only by housing systems but also by social and cultural expectations and economic conditions, producing context-specific housing realities and experiences. For example, over half of new affordable homes in England fail to meet the Nationally Described Space Standard. By comparing national housing approaches and examining the lived experience of homes, the project provides insights into design governance as well as patterns of housing standardisation and variation. The exhibition at the Farrell Centre connects these global findings to local housing ambitions and invites discussion about what housing quality should mean in practice.” – Professor Sam Jacoby, Royal College of Art
See the Exhibition: 26 February – 18 December 2026, Farrell Centre, Newcastle
An exhibition exploring who designs our homes and how we live.
What does a typical home in England look like? How does it compare to housing in other countries? How are these homes designed? And what is it like to live in them?This exhibition explores these questions through in-depth international and local case-studies of a range of homes. Through photographs, models and plans, it considers how housing design is shaped by policy regulations, local cultures and expectations and lived experiences of residents.
