A home designed to bring people closer to nature heads from Brighton to the V&A

The interior of the Wild House will be reconstructed in the V&A Learning Centre for the free, three-day festival, which runs from Friday 18 to Sunday 20 September. Visitors will be able to explore the house and its interactive features, discovering how materials, technology and design could help create homes that strengthen our relationship with the landscapes around us.

The Wild House – based inside the University of Brighton’s multi-award-winning Waste House – was originally created by researchers at the University of Brighton as a vision for a more nature-connected form of sustainable social housing. Built from locally sourced materials, it explores how homes could support biodiversity and human wellbeing, while helping people reconnect with the ecosystems on which they depend. The project asks how these ideas could be applied to the homes and communities where they are needed most.

Built as a ‘regenerative retrofit’ – a home that not only minimises its environmental impact but actively contributes to nature – the Wild House gives V&A visitors the chance to experience what it could be like to live more closely with the natural world.

Visitors can explore the house and its range of natural and interactive features, from its biodiverse timber facade, made using mixed-species wood to mimic a healthy woodland, to a woven willow nest, hay window shutter and heather lamp, which bring natural materials and textures into the home.

They can pick up the Fossil-phone to hear live sounds from a chalk dew pond at the Waterhall rewilding site, including frogs and toads, transmitted directly to the house’s chalk wall. The Dawn-chorus bed and pillow brings birdsong from the woodland that provided the timber for the bed frame into the home, while augmented reality binoculars let visitors look through a kitchen cupboard and see a panoramic woodland landscape, with real-time ecological changes.

Visitors can also take part in a flora and fauna treasure hunt using iPads to discover plants and animals that make their homes from the same materials and landscapes.

Together, the experiences show how materials, design and technology could be used to bring nature into our homes – and help us rethink what sustainable housing could look like.

The Wild House forms part of Digital Design Weekend 2026, an annual celebration of contemporary digital art and design. This year’s festival explores how creative technologies are reshaping our relationships with ecology, care and community, with more than 30 installations, workshops, talks and demonstrations taking place across the V&A.

Dr Nicholas Gant, Principal Lecturer at the University of Brighton and Co-Director of the Centre of Arts and Wellbeing, said: “The Wild House asks a simple but quite radical question: what if our homes could help us live better with nature, rather than separating us from it?

“Bringing the house to the V&A gives us an exciting opportunity to share that idea with a much wider audience. We’re particularly interested in what these ideas could mean for social housing, where thoughtful design could help create homes that support people’s wellbeing while also giving something back to the natural world.

“We hope visitors leave thinking differently about what a home could be – and what sustainable housing might look and feel like in the future.”

The Wild House was developed by Dr Nicholas Gant in collaboration with University of Brighton lecturer and researcher James Tooze, and Professor Alice Eldridge from the University of Sussex. Soundcamp CiC and The Brighton and Hove Downs: The Living Coast UNESCO Biosphere region are also key partners.

Following its appearance at the V&A, the Wild House will return to its permanent home at the University of Brighton, where it will continue to be used as a space for research, engagement and public activity exploring more sustainable ways of living.

Digital Design Weekend takes place at the V&A South Kensington from 18–20 September 2026. The event is free and open to the public, with Wild House activities available as a drop-in experience.