HPH401: Let’s build something

Ben Adam-Smith explains why he plans to take on a new mission, and why that’ll mean a slight change of direction and more collaboration.

Ben and his family on their building plot in 2017

A new chapter begins

After 14 years and 400 episodes exploring what we should be building in the 21st Century, Ben Adam-Smith arrives at a natural turning point. The original question — what houses should we be building? — has, in his view, been answered. We know the ingredients: high-performance envelopes (Passivhaus standard), healthy materials, simplicity of form, walkable and biodiverse communities, and genuine involvement of occupants in the process. Rather than continue to revisit territory that has been thoroughly covered, Ben feels a niggling urge to do more with the knowledge, contacts, and credibility he has accumulated. The podcast has been his apprenticeship; now he wants to put that learning to work in actually delivering housing.

Ben’s home and wildflower meadow!

Why the shift, and why now

Tackling another self-build seems unlikely when Ben and his family still love their home and are quite settled. And continuing to make content for self-builders and those planning to retrofit after having closed The Hub membership could only be as a hobby. Therefore, with a new goal, it seems the right time to shift away from bespoke housing. More importantly, Ben has had this impulse to tackle a development before — he tried to pivot towards building just as the pandemic arrived, with a young family and not enough bandwidth to make it stick. The biggest lesson from that earlier attempt was that he cannot do it alone, nor would he want to. Collaboration, he says, is going to be central to whatever comes next.

Sally working on her own project

Introducing Sally Godber and Mike Roe

At the Futurebuild exhibition, Ben bumped into Sally Godber, a director at WARM, the well-known low-energy building consultancy, and a driving force behind the Coaction training initiative. What began as a casual catch-up quickly revealed a shared restlessness. Both felt they wanted to leverage their skills in a bigger, more hands-on way. Ben’s question — “Sally, do you want to build something?” — was met with an immediate and telling response: “I think I might.” That speed of reaction told Ben everything he needed to know about the potential. Mike Roe, also a director at WARM, joined the conversation, bringing deep technical expertise and a grounding in both retrofit and new build.

What the collaboration might look like

The three share common values, a passion for healthy high-performance homes, and a belief that technical know-how is not a barrier. They are open about not yet knowing the precise shape of the venture — whether it will be a single development or an entity that could deliver ongoing value. Early conversations have touched on low-rise timber housing, where margins are tight but the technical scope suits their skill set, and on the possibility of starting small to test the idea before scaling up. Funding options, planning constraints, availability of affordable land and the need for a core team member close to any future site have already been flagged up as potential challenges.

What changes for the podcast

Going forward, the podcast will shift its emphasis from individual self-build and retrofit projects to the nuts and bolts of getting bigger housing projects off the ground — exploring where the opportunities are, what the barriers look like, and how they might be addressed. Sally and Mike may drop in on future interviews or feed in questions behind the scenes. The commitment to high-performance, healthy, low-carbon homes remains the beating heart of everything, but the lens has widened from showcasing finished projects to actively trying to build them.