PROTOHOME is led by the homeless charity Crisis, xsite architecture and TILT Gallery Installation and Joinery Services. It is in affiliation with Tyne Housing Association and Newcastle City Council and forms part of a research project at Durham University by artist Julia Heslop. PROTOHOME is a self-build housing project which will be temporarily sited and open to the public at Upper Steenbergs in
the Ouseburn, Newcastle upon Tyne, from 13th May-end of July 2016. Working alongside an architect and a joiner, a group of individuals who have experienced homelessness are developing a timber-frame model of self-build housing which is specifically designed for untrained self-builders. The aim is not to create a full housing model with services, but a ‘shell’ structure that offers a vision of how this model could be developed into working housing in the future. After the completion of the build, the ‘house’ created will become a hub for a programme of events and exhibitions examining the collaborative design/build process and wider issues to do with housing and homelessness in an austerity context and participatory alternatives. The project is grounded in the current social housing crisis, and the effect that austerity measures are having upon already precarious lives. Homelessness is growing and housing for low income groups is becoming more perilous and temporary in nature with increasing over-crowding, people living ‘on the move’, sofa-surfing or being forced to migrate out of the inner city, so people are seeking self-help solutions and more ‘marginal’ ways of living and ‘home-making’. It is vital that we seek out alternatives to the continued and accelerating retrenchment of state provided housing and rising homelessness. The design and build process will emphasise learning – long term personal development and employment opportunities for participants. The building will be developed through hands on workshops with TILT Gallery Installation and Joinery Services at Crisis Skylight Centre, Newcastle. Participants will be given training in joinery and will also document the process through film and photography. Training and skilling up are at the heart of this project – the learning process is just as important as the product and the process is designed to act as a stepping stone to other more formal education or employment opportunities.
