Home from Homes
Date: November 2022 Location: London, UK Area: 100m2 Function: Pavilion Status: Competition
“Home from Homes” is PAN- PROJECTS’ proposal for the London Festival of Architecture 2023 Eco Home Pavilion competition, organised in collaboration with the Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects. The brief called for a temporary pavilion within the Square Mile that reconsiders future modes of living in response to the climate crisis. The project begins with the material history of the city itself, drawing on the example of the London Stock Brick, traditionally produced using domestic ashes and cinders. This precedent reveals how waste has long been embedded within the construction of homes. The proposal extends this lineage into the present, assembling a series of rooms built entirely from materials derived from household waste, including plastics, textiles, glass, and food residues. Rather than proposing a singular model home, the pavilion is conceived as a collection of fragments. Each space operates as a recipe, demonstrating how discarded matter can be transformed into new architectural elements. Together, these fragments form a framework for rethinking domestic construction, where waste becomes a resource and the home is reimagined through processes of reuse.
Home from Homes imagines a pavilion as a collection of architectural recipes for future living. Rather than presenting a finished house, the project assembles a series of fragments, rooms constructed from materials derived from domestic waste. Floors made from recycled plastics, walls of compressed textiles, counters formed from food residues, and tiles cast from glass offcuts demonstrate how discarded matter can become the building blocks of tomorrow’s architecture. The project begins with London itself. The city is shaped by a long tradition of reuse. The London Stock Brick, historically produced from household ashes, stands as a reminder that waste has long been embedded in the making of homes. Home from Homes extends this lineage into the present, proposing that future domestic environments may once again emerge from by-products of everyday life, reworked through contemporary material processes. The pavilion is conceived not as a display of samples, but as an inhabitable catalogue. A sequence of rooms, each defined by a distinct waste-derived material, allows visitors to engage with them at full architectural scale. Surfaces are touched, floors are walked on, and walls are leaned against. Materials are experienced as part of lived space, not as isolated objects. At its core is the idea of the recipe. A shared method that transforms raw ingredients into something more than the sum of its parts. Architecture has always relied on such processes, from traditional joinery to modern composite systems. Today, materials made from waste are emerging, but their methods of use are still evolving. Home from Homes provides a space to test, compare, and communicate these approaches, turning individual experiments into a collective language. The materials are sourced through collaborations with designers, makers, and workshops working with reuse across different contexts. Each carries its own trajectory, from carpets reprocessed into blocks, to discarded glass reformed into tiles, to organic waste compressed into panels. Their assembly into rooms becomes a form of storytelling, suggesting a future in which architecture grows from what is already available. Rather than proposing a single model of a sustainable house, Home from Homes operates as an open platform for architectural production. It invites visitors to encounter the textures, irregularities, and potentials of materials derived from domestic life, and to reconsider how homes might be built not from scarcity, but from abundance. By sharing adaptable recipes instead of fixed solutions, the project points towards a future shaped through collective experimentation, where overlooked materials form the basis of new domestic environments.
