Paul Karakusevic: The Social / The Dwelling / The Estate

About the event

Join us for this free lecture with Paul Karakusevic, founder of Karakusevic Carson Architects.

Over the past 20 + years, he has worked alongside residents and local government to improve the design and delivery of affordable homes and neighbourhoods which reflect the needs of real communities; designing and crafting dwellings that give residents dignity and help to improve quality of life and chances for future generations.

Working on some of the city’s most challenging estates, the studio has been able to help a new era of public sector clients re-start council and local government housing in London. With residents at the heart of the process, Paul will talk about the social and community aspects of each scheme, the civic ambitions and leadership, and how this is translated into dwelling designs, their materiality, and the wider housing estate layout.

Please note, registration is not required for this event.

About the speaker

Paul Karakusevic founded Karakusevic Carson Architects to raise the architectural design standards and ambitions for the quality of the UK’s social and public housing. To date, the studio has completed 10 major London Council housing projects. Multi-award winning schemes which have provided exemplary homes and are advancing a new era of Council housing. The practice is currently working on some of the most challenging housing estate projects in the UK for a collection of pioneering local government and council client groups who are at the vanguard of direct delivery and social development.

The focus of the practice has always been focused on working for Local government, City Halls and Local neighbourhood community-led housing charities. At present and uniquely the whole studio is engaged in public work.

Projects have won numerous RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects), UK Housing Design, New London Architecture (NLA) and Civic Trust Awards. The practice has been named ‘Housing Architect of the Year’ several times and its work has been published regularly by leading national and international architectural press alongside features in the Guardian, Observer, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

In 2017, Paul co-authored the book Social Housing – Definitions and Design Exemplars. London, RIBA, 2017 and then co-authored Public Housing Works. London, Lund Humphries 2022; a book charting the last two decades of public housing design in the UK, told through the studio’s housing and masterplanning projects.

Paul has been invited to speak on housing design and the practice’s work at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the American Institute of Architects, AIA in New York and Los Angeles, the Australian Institute of Architects in Sydney, The Architecture Foundation at the Barbican, and leading universities, institutions and architecture conferences in the UK, Europe, USA, Canada, and Australia.

Over the past 10 years Paul has leant his experience to advise the Mayor of London, Homes England, numerous London Councils and cities around the world on approaches to the refurbishment and transformation of their public housing estates.