Self-Build

Definition

Self-build is the practice of ordinary, non-professional people constructing their own homes. Unlike speculative or mass housing, self-build transfers agency from the developer and the architect-as-author to the inhabitant-as-builder. The Segal method (developed by Walter Segal and documented by Jon Broome) is its most systematic architectural framework: a rational timber-frame building system characterized as "an attitude of mind rather than a system of construction" — a rigorous simplification of the whole building process from design to completion, using standard, readily available materials in market sizes. The method's openness and simplicity mean "it is possible for someone with no previous building experience to plan the layout and carry out the work." Self-build homes are adaptable, easy to extend, and produce variety and vitality absent from uniform mass housing (each family builds its own, "not constrained by the usual requirement to build identical houses").

Carraher's chapter adds the digital, open-source register: WikiHouse — "open-source, digitally driven, and environmentally responsive design" — "provides a broad range of clients who would not otherwise be able to afford a designer's services to adapt and fabricate their own home." Where Segal's self-builder masters a simplified construction kit, the WikiHouse self-builder downloads, adapts, and CNC-fabricates the design itself: the plan is parametric rather than fixed, the building knowledge is distributed rather than proprietary, and the client's incapacity (no designer's fees) is answered by mass customization rather than by standardization. Carraher presents it as the strongest contemporary exemplar of spatial agency — design's "ability to differentiate, customize, and empower those it serves."

Key Thinkers

• (Related, not yet paged: Walter Segal — developed the method; Jon Broome — documented and extended it as self-builder and joint architect on the Lewisham schemes.)

Related Concepts

• Everyday Architecture — self-build as the most radically de-professionalized form of everyday architectural production.
• Authorship — self-build erodes single authorship; the architect shifts from author to enabler.
• Housing — self-build as an alternative to both speculative developer housing and state mass housing.
• Modal Architecture — self-build works with modal conditions (standard materials, market availability, non-skilled labour) as generative principles.
• Add-on — the design-participation cousin: where the Segal method returns construction to the inhabitant, su11's add-on system returns composition — "each homeowner, through the selection and combination of their preferred add-ons, would then personally design the house."

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• The Essential Method: The Segal Method
• The 'Bread & Butter' of Architecture
• Inside the prefab house (Schneiderman 2018) — the prefab counterpart of occupant participation: in the Composite House, "a local contractor would build the house skeleton (as it is termed by the architects) from wood or steel. Each homeowner, through the selection and combination of their preferred add-ons, would then personally design the house"; Composite Architecture's homeowner "selects and previews the functionality, materials, and colors through an online interface." Where Segal's self-builder handles materials, su11's homeowner composes manufactured parts — the question of how far selection extends authorship remains open. See add-on, prefab-interior.
• Technologies: The spatial agency of digital praxis (Carraher 2018) — the digital, open-source register: WikiHouse as "open-source, digitally driven, and environmentally responsive design" giving "clients who would not otherwise be able to afford a designer's services" the ability "to adapt and fabricate their own home" — self-build re-founded on downloadable, adaptable, CNC-fabricatable design rather than on a simplified physical kit; presented as the strongest contemporary case of spatial agency ("differentiate, customize, and empower those it serves").
• The Kitchen as a Place to Be (Potter 1990/2006) — the workshop register, and the concept's economic threshold stated flatly: "The more individual kitchen becomes a workshop job (but first find your workshop, and then afford it)" (p. 264) — the individualized interior exists only through workshop production, and workshop production presupposes a workshop and a commissioning budget. The Penton kitchen is the worked case: "The job was workshop-built but for London, which required some unit-prefabrication and other standardised details, in order to keep within a fairly tight budget. This degree of generality, meeting requirements highly idiosyncratic in all other respects, gave the job its special character – half-way between joinery and simplified cabinetmaking" (p. 266) — self-build's professional cousin: the designer-builder hybridizing the one-off and the standardized to make workshop production affordable; and its success measured by attachment ("joiners were employed to dismantle the whole thing and re-erect it on an entirely different site," p. 268). Where Segal's method returns construction to the inhabitant and WikiHouse distributes the design files, Potter names what both presuppose and what neither can abolish — the workshop economy's access threshold ("first find your workshop, and then afford it"). See kitchen, authorship.
• source-notes/satterfield-swackhamer-2018-swimming-upstream

Open Questions

• Can self-build scale beyond individual sites to address housing crises at the urban level, or does its reliance on individual land ownership and voluntary labour structurally limit it?
• How does self-build relate to the "right to the city" — is it a tactic within the existing property regime, or does it prefigure a post-property form of urban production?