Repairing the Street: Value, Care, and the Politics of Housing

In 2023 HSA won the Liverpool Townhouse Competition to submit innovative design solutions to refurbish a terraced row of 9 vacant houses in the Wavertree area of the city.

The talk will begin with a short film 'Without These Walls" by artist Jayne Lawless, who worked with film maker Janet Brandon (Trickfilm) to produce the film. Through animation, poetry, found sound and demolition site footage, the film introduces the story of what happened to a street where homes were condemned to be cleared by Pathfinder, a Labour government’s ‘Housing Market Renewal Initiative.’ The film highlights the impact this had on many communities in the cities of the north of England, demolishing perfectly decent homes that people could still be living in today.**

The talk will cover a brief history of this controversial initiative, highlighting case studies in the city which have demonstrated different models for development, before detailing Harrison Stringfellow’s ‘Liverpool School of Building’ proposition for how care, community and a low carbon approach combining modern methods of construction with traditional skill development can offer an alternative sustainable outcome, which is the subject of their exhibition submission. Working with specialist subcontractor Hoose, and structural engineer Paul Day of Elliot Bond, they have developed a system and sequence to retrofit the terraces using MMC technology alongside minimal demolition and material reuse.

They will then chair a Q&A session to open up discussions about the reality of meeting affordable housing needs within the planetary constraints we face.

Harrison Stringfellow Architects (HSA) are based in Liverpool and work throughout the UK. Their innovative approach to practice has been recognised with selection as one of only nine RIBA Role Model Practices; the only firm in the North West to hold this accolade. Their commitment to meaningful engagement is exemplified by winning the Architect of The Year Award for Social Value in both 2021 and 2025, as well as for Refurbishment and Reinvention in 2025. In 2020, they were awarded the MacEwen Award, for which they were longlisted again in 2025. Many of their grass roots projects involve long-term relationships and trust building, with over 80% of their work in Liverpool commissioned through word of mouth and referral. Their permacultural approach to practice prioritises people and planet alongside profit, which is reinvested into improving ways of working, and alternative approaches to championing equity and diversity in the built environment.

Su Stringfellow co-founded Harrison Stringfellow in 2010 to explore alternative modes of practice and is currently serving on the RIBA presidential Taskforce to Transform Workplace Culture in Architecture following the damning Fawcett report into the profession. Su has a Masters degree from the University of Sheffield which focussed on the user participation process, and she continues to evolve this research in practice to help shape decision making. Su has worked on a wide range of project types often with community, heritage and sustainability at their heart and involving multi-stakeholder relationships within the context of complex and sensitive environments. She is a visiting tutor at local universities, co-founder of a social enterprise and a mother to two boys.

Bonnie Jackson is an architect at HSA with a background that includes studying at the Universities of Liverpool and Sheffield, and an Erasmus semester at the former Bauhaus School in Dessau. Her work explores the built environment through a feminist lens, as a design tool to promote the equity and well-being of its users. Her thesis project, which was nominated for the Architect’s Journal Student Award and the EUmies Young Talent Award, centred on translating activism into a novel architectural typology capable of initiating sustainable social change. Her architectural perspectives on materiality, circularity, and community are furthered by her personal practice in ceramics and volunteer work with Liverpool Tool Library.

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