Clay Housing+, Applied Research in the Marketplace: Architectural Design Research, is an Erasmus funded Research project between UCL, Centre for London Urban Design (CLOUD), and Chalmers University of Technology. 

The fundamental purpose of the research was to offer a best-practice model to encourage, articulate and disseminate innovative investigations for better quality and more sustainable social housing in European cities. 

This segment of research focuses on a proposal for a social housing scheme in West Ham, Upton Gardens, London, through the development of a cost-effective and sustainable social housing development, re-thinking London’s tradition of terraced housing. 

The early prototype studies explored the devleopment of a perforated, low carbon-intensive modular clay brick, and a series of unfired clay surfaces used as a passive method to absorb surplus heat, moisture and volatile organic compounds in interior environments, making the home healthier for occupants.

The bricks use waste London clay as a modern vernacular material, and the permeable surfaces contain re-inforcement from local waste streams: through the re-use of broken brick aggregates and pigments from local construction sites. The modular brick components explore low-carbon intensive processes, between re-inforced unfired and low-fired bricks (with rice ash), to explore variations in passive humidity control.