Brighton Wild House/ Waste House - ecological architectural design

The Brighton Waste house becomes The Brighton Wild House

In 2025, this special building evolved into The Brighton Wild House, a pioneering sustainable ‘show home’ that demonstrates how biodiversity-friendly materials can be used in social housing at scale. In this form it takes the next step in active sustainable design practice, providing a blueprint for policymakers and housing providers while reconnecting people to the ecosystems they impact.

Under its new name of The Wild House, it continues to underpin research as to how housing can exist in harmony with the local landscape and support biodiversity, while enhancing human well-being and fostering community engagement. This is more essential than ever at a time when one in five people in the UK living in areas deprived of green space.

From walls crafted with Brighton’s natural chalk to timber sourced from nearby woodlands, every element of the house strengthens the bond between people and the landscapes around them. Alongside its ecological design, the house features interactive elements – including immersive soundscapes and augmented reality experiences – encouraging new ways to engage with the natural world from home, for example using sensory networks to playfully connect between products and the originating habitats of the materials they are derived from. Connecting people and nature-based making via technology may seem jarring, but has a solid evidence-base and chimes with our location in an urban UNESCO Biosphere – a designation that challenges experimentation in ways to live harmoniously with nature.

Inside the Brighton Wild House 

Built as a ‘regenerative retrofit’ – a home that not only minimises its environmental impact but actively contributes to nature – visitors can interact with a range of features designed to strengthen the relationship between people and the landscapes that provided the house’s materials:

• A biodiverse timber facade – Built using mixed-species wood, the facade mimics the biodiversity of a healthy woodland and supports local wildlife.

• Woven willow nest and natural textures – A snug shelter made from woven willow, a hay window shutter, and a heather lamp create tactile experiences that bring nature indoors.

• Fossil-phone – A sound link from a chalk dew pond at the Waterhall rewilding site, allowing guests to hear live sounds of photosynthesis, frogs and toads transmitted directly to the house’s chalk wall.

• Dawn-chorus bed and pillow – A morning wake-up call featuring the birdsong from the same woodland that provided the timber for the bed frame.

• Kitchen cupboard portal – Augmented reality binoculars allow users to ‘see through’ a cupboard into a panoramic woodland landscape, observing real-time ecological changes. 

This latest phase of the living, ongoing design project is funded by The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Ecological Citizen(s) Network+. It has been led by Centre for Arts and Wellbeing director Dr Nicholas Gant in collaboration with fellow University of Brighton lecturer and researcher James Tooze, and Professor Alice Eldridge, Professor of Sonic Systems at the University of Sussex. Soundcamp CiC, an arts and ecology cooperative that design and build interactive transmission ecologies from DIY broadcasting devices, public sound and radio projects and The Brighton and Hove Downs: The Living Coast UNESCO Biosphere region. 

By exploring new ways to integrate nature into the built environment, the university continues to drive meaningful change in sustainable living.

The University of Brighton invites housing providers, social housing residents, and policymakers to explore the Wild House and help reimagine how homes can foster stronger connections to nature.

Features of the Brighton Wild House refit include (top) use of biodiverse timber, woven willow nest and natural textures, cupboard design to use augmented reality binoculars

Designing and building the original Brighton Waste House

The brain child of architect, lecturer and University of Brighton researcher Duncan Baker-Brown, the creation of the Brighton Waste House followed his own prototype development for Kevin McCloud's popular Grand Designs Live television programme.

Commissioned by TalkBack Thames TV the original design project was known as ‘The House that Kevin Built’ (THTKB) in collaboration with Grand Designs presenter Kevin McCloud. When constructed outside the London ExCel centre in the Custom House area of Newham, East London, it was Europe’s first pre-fabricated building made almost entirely out of organic, compostable and replenishable material. It was also UK’s first ‘A+’ rated dwelling from the point of view of energy performance. The House that Kevin Built (THTKB) was constructed over a period of 6 days using a combination of ‘offsite’ innovative and interesting building systems and materials. The Grand Designs Live show was aired from 4 May 2008 and attracted over 5 million viewers.

So why not rebuild it at the University of Brighton using the same principles, ethos and techniques? The project was created in partnership with waste reusage expert Cat Fletcher and her Freegle organisation, Mears Group housing and social care provider, Greater Brighton Metropolitan College [formerly City College] and a range of specialists and waste-concern enterprises.  

This living laboratory uncovered numerous problematic practices leading to wastage. For example the old vinyl banners that you might see tied to street lamps during festivals  tend to be date sensitive and are therefore only used once. At the Brighton Waste House, these are now being used as internal vapour control layers. Old toothbrushes are also being used in the wall cavities, including over 20,000 of them that have only been used once by business class and first class passengers flying from Gatwick. 

Other materials were taken construction project discarded material, including thrown-away bricks, ply sheets and off-cut timber, as well as domestic rubbish including old plastic razors, denim jeans, DVDs and video cassettes, that were slotted into wall cavities to help with insulation in the house. These were then monitored to see how efficient their insulation qualities are, bringing scientist postgraduate research students into the research team. 

Ten tonnes of chalk waste and 10 per cent clay were used to create a rammed chalk wall, with a compressor and pneumatic rammer. Rammed earth can contribute to the overall energy-efficiency of buildings: its density, thickness and thermal conductivity make it a particularly suitable for storing passive solar energy as well as that given off by occupants of the building. Warmth takes almost 12 hours to work its way through a wall 35 centimetres thick.

19,800 toothbrushes - New and used for wall cavity, north-east corner downstairs

Wall - 10 tonnes of rammed chalk

The Brighton Waste House's supporters and users

The Brighton Waste House has benefitted from the support of Brighton’s Green MP, Caroline Lucas, who laid the foundation stone, and is closely linked with Brighton and Hove City Council, alongside construction and cultural organisations. 

It engaged the community by working with City College Brighton and Hove, and Mears Group, allowing students and apprentices a chance to work on a live construction project. It is now being used by colleagues delivering courses at the University of Brighton, including the MA in Sustainable Design, whose work involves completing and updating the live research project that is the Brighton Waste House.

Many of the schools that visited the construction site now take part in creative workshops, seminars and events held at the Brighton Waste House, hosted or curated by artists, makers, designers, scientists, building contractors, or whoever wants to be involved in testing ideas around sustainable design.

Book the Waste House

If you would like to book the Waste House for an event or would like to use our open creative  space, please enquire with the architect and project director, Duncan Baker-Brown.