More Than
Four Walls

An original installation at the barbican,

about the transformative power of a safe home.

In 2019, we won the Housing Futures commission, to create a new installation to raise awareness and renewed empathy among already exhausted housing professionals.

Drawing on our own childhood experiences, we created an immersive, audio-visual exhibition, exploring empathy, homelessness, poverty, and hope.

Beginning in an oversized cardboard box, participants are given a private set of headphones and an item of clothing.

One by one, they step through a hidden door into a hyper-realistic domestic hallway, faced with a mirror. Their own reflection morphs into a video of the person they’ll be hearing, wearing the same item of clothing, and the story begins.

As they explore the rest of the installation, participants hear their guide tell their own true story about their relationship with housing. Some choose to browse the exhibition; others watch a multitude of video screens; other sit quietly and just listen, as they find themselves transported by the honest, intimate, and moving words they hear.

All four stories run on a timed loop, and gradually they synchronise with the vieo content, and each other, bringing all four people together for an interactive ending, facing the future together.

Afterwards, viewers are invited to add to the exhibition, leaving their photo, story, and ideas on a wall of faces.