Network

Alex is currently studying MArch Spatial Practice with Central Saint Martins. The focus of his inquiry being the UK housing crisis and exploring resilience strategies for communities to grow in self-sufficiency through alternative ways of living. He is driven to provide tools to hack current destructive systems, policies and infrastructures for the 99% rather than the 1% which they are often designed to serve.
He has experience in both large and small scale projects, ranging from carving bespoke woodware to constructing temporary pavilions in public space to museum retrofitting and lighting design.
He is passionate about reducing the wealth disparity in the UK and repairing the prevailing relationship that the UK has with the land through equipping communities to be resiliently self-sufficient and forge a different path.

Francesca’s practice of design and making is inspired by the local landscape where she’s based. Living and working in Cornwall, she is one of ReCollective founders, a co-director of Social Designs and a board director of Girls Assemble UK. She brings to the table theories of care and practice methods which incorporate a material-first approach.
Francesca has a background in art, carpentry and sustainable architecture, derived from both her studies at the Royal College of Art and the Centre for Alternative Technology and her time in practice - pursuing specific interests in community participation, ecology and local heritage crafts.

Fred is an Engineering Sustainability Consultant with a passion for Low Embodied Carbon Materials and creative problem solving. Having cultivated a sustainable state of mind, reading E.F. Schumacher at a formative age, and after having first hand experience of some of the globes current mega projects, this inspired the imperative to enact change at a fundamental level. Fred has a background in both Architecture and Engineering, having studied for an MArch at CAT and works currently within the field of engineering, driving Low Embodied Carbon and Circular Design principles as well as the technical aspects of design optimisation. He believes that the solutions that society needs in order to make change are too often out of reach of those that are most impacted by its effects, Material re-use paired with place-based social design offers a pathway in order to restore this balance.

Freya is currently based in North-West London, where she works for a film set construction company. After experiencing the shocking scale of waste within the industry and recognising the huge opportunity this problem presented, she decided to stay. After many heated conversations in the pub, she was part of founding ReCollective. Her background is in Sustainable Architecture (having graduated from the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) last year), community consultation and illustration, although her main motivation is getting things done.

Hannah is a designer and maker based in South-East London. Her practice sits between architecture and art, she is interested in spatial justice, equality and sustainability. She is passionate about working with communities to facilitate self-build projects, specifically promoting the use of natural materials. She has a degree in Architecture from Oxford Brookes and a Masters in Sustainable Architecture from the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT). She has previous experience in art fabrication, design for manufacture, construction, working with volunteers, running co-design workshops and is currently working for U-Build who produce sustainable, flat-pack, modular buildings. Seeing the amount of waste produced by the fabrication and construction industry has motivated her to be a part of the Re-collective team aiming to create change with direct action.

Harry is a Designer and Maker based between London and Sussex. He is interested in a regenerative and reuse approach to construction, that embraces the relocalisation of construction supply chains, and the creation of local economies centred around communities engaging with material production. Harry is a member of Assemble - a multidisciplinary collective spanning art, design, architecture and workspace with a core focus on collaborative making. This current period follows from his studies at The Bartlett School of Architecture and The Centre for Alternative Technology, where hands on experimentation with materials informed by the local landscape, addressing the current crises, has been a consistent and ongoing path of discovery.

Kai lives in Bristol, where he works as structural engineer specialising in modern timber construction and low carbon natural materials. Through his past experiences studying design engineering, working at a tech startup and as a humanitarian aid worker, Kai has cultivated a pragmatic design approach targeted at mitigating the climate and biodiversity crisis. This has manifested itself in a design philosophy of if it ain’t broke, re-use it!

Located on the outskirts of Swindon, Sash has experience in carpentry, digital fabrication and computation. Increasingly frustrated with market mechanics of a neoliberal society and having decided that the word "profit" has a more expansive meaning than "financial returns", he left architectural practice. This brought him to study at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) and eventually join ReCollective. His ambition is to support the operations of decentralised grassroots organisations and to provide a critique to the wasteful and impersonal practices of traditional commerce.

Ste is based in Cornwall. He’s a systems-thinker and community builder with a penchant for participatory design. Heavily influenced by a colourful lived experience that ranges from raves and squats to food and housing coops, he’s eventually settled down and established himself as a social entrepreneur. He represents Social Designs and Recollective as a founding director - Falmouth Food Cooperative as co-director and food poverty charity, The Hive, as a Trustee. His work across sectors channels into a unified vision; stitching together siloed demographics and industries, aiming to instigate to community-based economies that’ll stand up to the challenge of climate adaptation.

Will is an artist working between the boundaries of visual art, architecture and design. His work explores post-industrial landscapes / climate change heritage; urban mining & circular economies; and resilient community building. Some questions which drive this thinking are: How can an arts practice influence the realms of architecture and vice versa to help us navigate the social, economic and environmental issues of our time? How will we reimagine, reuse and recycle the materials, places and spaces in careful and regenerative ways that are mutually supportive locally and globally? He has studied at University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol and the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Wales, and is currently a resident studio holder at Primary in Nottingham where he is developing, testing and exploring the ideas and questions above.

Zack is currently pursuing his RIBA part 1 at the Architectural Association in London. Growing up in Cornwall and London, he has cultivated a deep appreciation for the natural landscape and the people within it, recognising communities' power and beauty wherever it manifests. Previously, Zack worked in Hatton Garden for four years, where he was involved in processing precious metal waste. This experience instilled in him a profound appreciation for the value inherent in waste, while also highlighting the fact that the market's perception of value is limited. Zack's core belief is that society is currently unwell and requires reimagining, with an emphasis on prioritising people and community. He firmly believes that access to food and energy should be recognised as basic human rights, accessible to all individuals.