Retrofit 25: What’s Stopping Us?

Collective Works are collaborating with the National Retrofit Hub and the Building Centre in this year’s Retrofit Exhibition. Following on from Retrofit 23:Towards Deep Retrofit of Homes at Scale and Retrofit 24: The Reuse Agenda for Our Commercial, Cultural & Civic Buildings, Retrofit 25: What’s Stopping Us? continues the conversation, highlighting good examples and suggesting routes around the challenges.

The exhibition is a powerful exploration of the solutions that will help us navigate the barriers and opportunities within the retrofitting of our built environment. As we face the pressing challenges of climate breakdown, social inequity and economic instability, this exhibition will inspire us to rethink what’s stopping us from taking action.

The exhibition is arranged around eight themed hubs, looking at the opportunities that retrofit brings.  These focus on communities, hearts and minds, jobs, carbon and materials, innovation, money, and ethics. The eighth hub also takes a holistic view and looks at the whole value that retrofitting our buildings can bring.

Here, in the Retrofit and Whole Value hub that Collective Works’ Mid Terrace Dream – the retrofit of a North London Victorian terrace –  is featured. It is an example not only of how it can be done, but the advantages retrofit can bring – in terms of health, in terms of warmth, in terms of comfort and in terms of reducing your energy bills.

To reach our carbon targets in this country, but also to improve the quality of the nations housing, health and comfort, 14.3 million homes need to be retrofitted. We need to accelerate action on this, so – what is stopping us?

Sara Edmonds, co-director of the National Retrofit Hub says “This exhibition is a call to action – inviting everyone to recognise that the tools and solutions are already available. It’s time to start asking what’s stopping us and use this understanding to drive action by taking the necessary steps to transform our buildings, our communities and our environment”

If you fancy a tour of the exhibition with one of our team, get in touch. We’d love to show you around.

Look out for the events programme around the exhibition, we’re looking forward to joining in with events, and keeping the conversation going.

Retrofit 25: What’s Stopping Us? is at the Building Centre , 26 Store Street, London WC1E 7BT, from 27th March 2025 to 19th September 2025. It is free, and open to all.