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Re-Crafts College

Isobel Mills

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Isobel is a spatial practitioner from East London. She is passionate about bridging the gaps between design and construction, getting hands-on with building and sharing construction and making knowledge through workshops, live-builds and participatory processes. Through the lens of collaborative feminist construction, she aims to facilitate women and young people to shape their own built environments. Her work focuses on the use of natural and reclaimed materials and circular systems.

Isobel is a spatial practitioner from East London. She is passionate about bridging the gaps betw...

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The Re-Crafts College reimagines the culture of construction from the ground up. Located in Custom House, Newham, East London, the public school proposes a radical shift in how we build: slower, more collaborative, feminist and rooted in care for both people and the planet. Centred on repair, reuse, refurbishment and retrofit (Re-Craft), it responds to the UK construction industry’s failings—addressing gender inequality (currently only 1% of skilled trades professionals are women) and the critical skills shortage (230,000 construction workers are needed by 2030 to meet retrofit demands). The College provides practical, on-site training using reclaimed materials, upskilling women, girls, and local communities, and reducing gender and class divides; rewriting the rules of who gets to physically shape our built environment. By repurposing a vacant building as its first site, the College demonstrates an alternative to demolition-led regeneration. Every lesson, every brick laid, is part of a bigger movement to repair what’s broken: not just structures, but systems. Through the lens of making and amplifying female voices, the Re-Crafts College envisions a construction culture where the needs of marginalised communities—and the planet—are rightfully prioritised.

Final work

Female construction workers repairing on scaffolding repairing a building with female construction workers transporting materials in the foreground.

Re-Crafts College Poster

The Re-Crafts College poster reinterprets the original 'Operative Society of Bricklayers' trade union engraving by challenging its depiction of women as ornamental statues rather than as capable labourers and skilled construction workers.

An illustration of the ground floor plan at the bottom, then a section, then an isonometric, with zoomed in details.

Illustration Summary

The design proposal, along with the initial phase of the College, prioritises activating the vacant ground floor shop fronts. As local residents and students begin participating in the construction of these spaces, the Re-Crafts College gradually expands to retrofit the entire building and eventually extends its efforts to neighbouring housing estates throughout the Custom House area.

Internal perspective with women reading and cleaning in the foreground and women learning construction skills in the background.

Internal Workshop Perspective

The vacant ground floor shop fronts are re-crafted with clay plaster and designed as an open-plan workshop space. Collaboration, inclusivity and accessibility is encouraged to prevent the different trades from working in isolation.

Photograph of a 1:1 model of a clay-straw block places on reclaimed blue timber placed on a steel i-beam with red string tying these together.

Column Material Test

Constructed from locally sourced materials near the Custom House site, along with an experimental clay-straw insulation block, the column material test demonstrates the material palette envisioned for the Re-Crafts College. The components are tied together with string alone, representing a soft and caring approach to making that embodies principles of reuse and deconstruction in building practices.

Research and process

Bricklaying at the Building Crafts College in Stratford, Newham

Exchanging the knowledge and skill of bricklaying and disrupting the male-dominated college environment.

Women bricklaying, building a collaborative brick planter.

Female-only bricklaying workshop at Cody Dock, Newham

Testing the Re-Crafts College proposal through workshops by teaching basic bricklaying skills during female-only workshop sessions. This was important since only 1% of women are employed in the skilled trades such as bricklaying in the UK.

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Re-Crafts College

The Re-Crafts College reimagines the culture of construction from the ground up. Located in Custom House, Newham, East London, the public school proposes a radical shift in how we build: slower, more collaborative, feminist and rooted in care for both people and the planet. Ce...

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