Green Room - University of Sheffield collaboration

In late 2024, a group of students from the University of Sheffield’s School of Architecture embarked on a six-week live project exploring how creative, low-carbon structures could support community conversations around climate, nature, and place. Their concept - Green Room - laid the foundations for what would evolve into MAKE Room, one of the project strands of the Derbyshire Makes programme. This blog reflects on that original student project, how it sparked new thinking, and how its legacy continues to shape our approach to creative, place-based climate engagement across Derbyshire.

With permaculture and natural design underpinning the concepts, Green Room aimed to question “How do you connect with nature?”

Green Room questioned how arts based engagement can provide environmental justice in a safe setting, enabling users to feel comfortable to discuss what nature means to them.

Seed Pods were co-designed, through a collaborative process with various stakeholders and community groups to physically represent the initial stages of natural growth patterns found in nature. Seed Pods are ‘spaces’, simultaneously of an enclosed and open nature, which can adopt many forms dependent on the intended programme of use. The pods can utilise existing urban or rural spaces, enhancing engagement with the area, or they can become a setting or event within their own right, all the while adapting a temporary or permanent nature.