Ikonomo: Our Story

Hi there, I'm Harry, the founder of Ikonomo. I want to tell you how a simple passion of mine turned into a full-blown mission.

So, it all started with my love for carpentry and joinery. I actually spent my early career, from 2018 to 2020, as a trainee joiner with the National Trust, focusing solely on traditional carpentry and joinery work on their heritage buildings across the country.

Unfortunately, like many people, I was made redundant due to Covid-19 in 2020. I didn't stop, though. I spent the better part of the next two years working independently across the UK. This is when I really started designing and building those beautiful timber garden rooms and pergolas, transforming customers' gardens into perfect, functional spaces.

The Moment I Knew I Had to Act

After that two years of working on gardens, I was lucky enough to be invited to a few UNICEF events. And honestly? What they showed in their documentaries—the sheer scale of the global housing crisis and the extreme issues people were facing worldwide—just stopped me in my tracks. It was a massive wake-up call. I truly hadn't grasped how urgent things were until I saw that content firsthand. That was the moment I realized: I needed to step back and find a way that I could actually start making a difference.

When I started looking closer at the major issues here in the UK—the rising cost of living, the crazy house prices, and the overwhelming plastic pollution along our coasts—I saw the connection. I felt deeply that there had to be a single solution that could genuinely bind all these problems together and tackle them at once.

Our Solution: The IKo-85 Scheme

The biggest thing that stuck with me was the housing problem. As a 23-year-old myself, I fall directly into that bracket of people who are struggling to buy their first home because of these ever-increasing costs. It's incredibly difficult for the younger generation to get on the housing ladder now, and I’m living proof of that challenge. That's why I came up with the idea for the IKo-85 Scheme.

IKo-85 isn't just about building homes; it was developed to remedy a few of the above issues at the same time.

Here's how we approach it:

• Waste to Wonderful Homes: We work only with UK-based charities, organizations, and businesses to intercept waste that would otherwise end up polluting our rivers and oceans. We take that waste and transform it into eco-conscious, modular homes. Think about it: Aluminium becomes our sturdy, reliable framing, and plastic gets a whole new purpose in the essential interior components.

• Social Impact: The IKo-85 project is also fundamentally about people. As we grow, we’re dedicated to working with those who need it most—not just giving them a home, but creating those vital working and training opportunities for them right alongside us.

• Closing the Loop: We’ve even developed a range of products with high recycled content that are designed to be infinitely recyclable at the end of their life. We’re actually closing the loop on waste, which is the whole point of a truly sustainable future.

The IKo-85 scheme is bigger than just building houses. We want to get into educational environments and find fun, engaging ways for people of all ages to get hands-on with sustainability efforts. It's about building a movement, not just a structure.

Where We Are Now

And here we are now. To date, we're proud to say we have over 50 incredible organizations, charities, and businesses all working with us. They're all UK-based, and they're helping us achieve this real change we're talking about.

Our immediate, big goal is to have the very first site of affordable housing up and running, fully occupied, and making a difference by the end of 2026.

To hit this target, we are currently seeking donations and any funding we can get hold of. If you or your organization can assist—even with the smallest of financial contributions—it helps tremendously toward achieving these massive goals, which will make a vast difference over the coming years.