Meet the Team

My background is in community project management and have always had a passion for investigating, enabling and contributing to community. A core question and thread that runs through all I do, is to ask how people can participate in grassroots self organising in a meaningful way to create communities that act as a stable ground to contribute to individual empowerment that overflows to contribute to the wider empowerment of society.

I believe that living in collaborative, cooperative, harmonious community goes a long way towards offering solutions to all major societal epidemics that we face today through overcoming isolationism and disconnection, inspiring engagement with, and implantation of sustainable and practical solutions that in turn support ecological and mental health issues.

Delighted to be part of the Ecomotive team, I enjoy supporting the effective delivery of current projects, as well as contribute to their much wider aspirations to see how we can have the most beneficial impact on the housing sector and Bristol City at large.

Other positions held: Director, Confederation of Cooperative Housing

Qualifications include: Community led-housing enabler & Art of Hosting

Recent experience includes: Co-founding Fishponds Co-Build project, a grassroots community led housing group, who secured their own site in Fishponds, Bristol, with a mission to develop it into an affordable flagship eco community development. I supported this group in the roles of both managing director & project manager.

Alex is an RIBA registered architect with over 18 years experience in practice in the UK, having worked at award winning architectural practices  Stride Treglown in Bristol and Richard Partington Architects in London, before joining Barton Willmore in Reading to work in masterplanning and urban design. Alex joined Ecomotive in 2017 to oversee the masterplanning and architectural design services.

He is a residential specialist and has worked extensively in the sector from strategic masterplanning to on-site delivery of projects ranging from 3,500 homes to single listed buildings.

Alex has significant experience in high quality residential schemes, especially and low-energy, brown-field developments on often difficult sites, for example the Healthy New Town Whitehill & Bordon in Hampshire. He was a member of the Zero Carbon Hub team responsible for setting the Fabric Energy Efficiency Standard and believes buildings should be robust and easy to use, not over-reliant upon technology and crafted to be inspiring additions to our communities. Alex has managed projects from inception to completion, leading the design and technical development and also advising clients on sustainability issues.

Having grown up in the Netherlands, Alex is passionate about the design quality of new homes in the UK and the role of residents in the design and construction process and is behind the award winning modular SNUG Homes; an off-site low-energy affordable housing initiative aimed at bring quality, sustainable design to the public.

I have been working with Ecomotive and in the community led housing sector in Bristol for over the past five years, including everything from operations and finance management, to project management. My real passion is seeing projects and people succeed and flourish! So I bring that and my love for solutions and clarity to everything I do.

Currently, I am managing Ecomotive's Local Self Build Register, providing a highly intelligent register for Local Authorities around the UK; project managing the delivery of a staged training and Self-Finish process for 50 households at the Shaldon Road site in Bristol, along with United Communities, BCLT and future residents. I am also managing the SNUG Build Volunteer Programme.

Personally, I live in a eco-build co-housing scheme where I am raising my daughter in a community where each of the residents were integrally involved in the self-finish design process; I have served on the Board of another community-led housing project here in Bristol; and I am currently participating in CCH's community led housing enabler training, where I am learning a great amount along the way, whomever I meet, everywhere I go.

I moved to Bristol in 2005, a practicing multidisciplinary sculptor, passionate about how we relate to and interact with materials. As my knowledge and interest in this area developed, I looked more toward how we manage resources at a local level (in towns/ cities) and particularly the impacts on local industry. This way of thinking coincided with a new career in timber frame construction and design, followed by a masters degree in Sustainable Development in practice.

I began working on the technical and material aspects of the SNUG Home in tandem with the setting up of my business 'Materials in Mind’ in early 2018. Materials in Mind exists to accelerate uptake and improve the experiences of using more environmentally sustainable and resilient materials in building projects, including increasing focus on local procurement, recycled content and reuse. As the SNUG Home moves from concept to production phase, Materials in Mind provides design and materials consultancy, supplier introductions/ partnerships, as well as process mapping for the off-site manufacture and development of SNUG documentation.

Following my MA in Rural Development I chose to focus my career on sustainable community development and livelihoods. This took me overseas to Rwanda to work with homeless young people, and ways of reintegrating them into their communities; giving them the tools to rebuild their lives and contribute to others.  Following on from this, I returned to the UK with my family and came across Ecomotive through the project of Bridge Farm based next to my children's school, Glenfrome Primary.

My initial interest was to build on the site and be part of the community that was developing there. So, I started volunteering for Ecomotive, learning new skills and sharing experience which has in turn led to a great opportunity for me to learn and work alongside other people passionate in community creation and to learn about community led housing. I am now part of the team working for Ecomotive part time. I've been involved in the Local Self Build Register, Bridge Farm community workshops, and more recently the set up of the SNUG modular housing project.

I am currently a marketing and communications intern at Ecomotive, where I work with spreading our ideas to as many platforms as possible in the community. I am also studying Spatial Planning and Development at the University of Cardiff, as I personally hold a strong passion towards learning the planning and surveying aspects of self-build homes and community led housing. This all began from when I wrote a dissertation on how Self-build housing can be a more affordable alternative to buying a home in the UK and cities such as Bristol. After seeing many community led housing developments prosper in other parts of the world, it encouraged me to think about how the UK can adopt these efficient strategies, even if there are obstacles involved, including a more rigid planning system in comparison.

Being a local Bristolian myself, I have always been fascinated by how much the city has developed over my lifetime. This has inspired me to work and become part of the process to the continuous change that such a vibrant city has to offer.