A Home of your own

It has been known for a long time that countries can kick start their economies through building, it therefore came as no surprise that the budget offers a stimulus package to encourage 'housebuilding'. Along the river Thames, huge residential developments are being built in places such as Vauxhall and Battersea, however these are for the most part bought as speculative investments by overseas buyers. That helps the economy, even if these developments are empty most of the year. Therefore, there is not a lack of accommodation, but rather a lack of financially accessible accommodation.

The problems in the housing sector are not new, even the concerns about space standards have been around a long time.

A 1932 cartoon by Heath Robinson

   Previous affordable housing solutions include Buckminster Fullers' Dymaxion house, designed as mass-produced aluminum housing units, in an attempt at industrializing housing production in the same way that Henry Ford had industrialized car production. Some forms of prefab housing are a descendant of this form of approach.

    In the UK, Walter Segal proposed self-build timber-frame housing in Lewisham, South East London. Segal’s method allowed inexperienced self-builders to build their own homes quickly and efficiently and Segal is often cited as the first architect to practice a truly participatory approach – in an era before public participation and user collaboration were accepted as viable or even thought possible. The early success of this development was helped by the physical act of self-building, as the self-builders developed friendships, helped each other and built a strong and lasting community. The methods and ideals of Walter Segal’s approach continue to be promoted today by the Walter Segal Self-Build Trust.

Walter Segal self-build housing, Lewisham, London.

 English timber frame houses from 1250 onwards were essentially prefab kit buildings, assembled by two people and if you examine the beams at the junctions you will find that these are numbered for easy assembly.

 

       Television programs such as 'Grand Designs' have made the concept of self-build more acceptable in recent years and in a time of economic uncertainty, maybe we need to seek to transform the nature of economic and civic participation by changing the way affordable housing is produced.

   Self-build could provide an opportunity to house those people with the most difficulty starting out on the housing ladder – with less financial risk. However, it would be daunting to embark on a self-build project if you had never built anything before, so what is built and how it goes together is very important – although if a kit house from 1250 can change hands for 600K today, then it is not difficult to see the potential benefits. As with the original timber frame house, the building would need to be easy to assemble, adaptable and subject to continual improvement, rather than conceived as a finished design.

 

 Lustron prefab housing. Ohio 1949

       At a time when many architects have 'less work', I would like to encourage the RIBA to promote a policy interventionist social approach to architecture that seeks to invigorate practice with solutions for affordable housing. This might take the form of a competition to design a self-build kit house with a selection of winning entries for variety. I would suggest that the judges include one or two prefab panel manufacturers – who could promote their products via the competition. The National Self-Build Association (NASBA) should be represented and if possible someone from Government encouraged to participate. If the 'competition was run in two stages, the winning entries could be determined by public vote – helping to engage the public with the Institute. The winning entries could be exhibited at the RIBA, published in the RIBA Journal (who can run an article on Walter Segal's housing – then and now) and be introduced to the prefab panel manufacturers to see if they can bring their designs to the market.

I am sure there will be people who will dismiss this proposal as whimsical – and yet such a proposal holds at it's heart that change is possible and if things can change for the worse, then why not for the better? Design is a way of making things happen and in the end it might not even be about the success of such a proposal, but of finding new ways to practice and to provoking change within the field of architecture.