Life in Walter Segal's self-build 'anarchist' estate

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/sep/16/anarchism-community-walter-segal-self-build-south-london-estate

by markvdb • 11 years ago

43 14 11 years ago

markvdb3• 11 years ago

Wonderfully simple construction method that should appeal to technically oriented people. I'd be grateful for pointers to more contemporary work in this regard, as the insulation value of these is getting rather problematic.

memracom• 11 years ago

Funny to read about how this guy invented a wonderful NEW way to build houses back in the 1960s, but the article describes the way that most Canadian houses (and Scandinavian ones) have been built for at least 10 years or so.

Not to mention that if you go to Russia or other parts of the former Soviet Union you can find lots of people with self-built houses made from bricks and various sorts of stone blocks covered with plaster, whose construction is very much life the average 30's pebble dash home in Britain. Minus the pebbles of course. Russians prefer smooth plaster and paint or decorative tiles.

Having participated in building the Canadian way, moving around long heavy timbers, I wonder if the European brick and block way is not superior for self-building. Much easier to lift one block into postion, than a long timber, or a prebuilt truss (crane required) or a prebuilt wall (half a dozen strong helpers required and they bear the risk of it falling on them if a mistake is made).

DanBC• 11 years ago

Pebble dash is an old technique that was "rediscovered" by the Arts and Crafts Movement and repopularised.

You can find it on some Cotswold manor houses. It's a bit disconcerting.

http://www.pebbledashing.com/why-use-pebbledashing.php

http://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/pebbledash/pebb...

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/apr/21/pebbleda...

markvdb3• 11 years ago

I have looked at this quite closely. It looks very similar at first sight, but the process is quite different from conventional Canadian timber framing, in that it has a radical focus on simplicity and self building.

On a practical level, this translates into things like much more modest foundations (poles instead of slab), a 60 cm grid system that is perpetuated throughout the house, plasterboard panels that get loosely fit instead of screwed on, an extremely simple but sturdy stair design, and more.

A more contemporary descendant seems to be http://irishvernacular.com .

NickNameNick• 11 years ago

I worked for just over a year as a builders labourer in NZ. One evening, as prep for the next days work I singlehandedly sorted out all the pre-built roof trusses, and lifted them up on top of the wall frames we'd stood up that day. It wasn't very difficult, and certainly didn't require a crane.

notahacker• 11 years ago

Simple self build houses built from wood panels are far more common in parts of the world where - unlike London - the cost of construction labour isn't the least of all the problems faced by people wanting housing.

akgerber• 11 years ago

I would suggest that the real factor preventing more-widespread application of this idea is a lack of developable land near frequent rail service. The houses do appear to make extremely efficient use of land in the Japanese fashion, however, with modest building lots on a very narrow street.

The aesthetic is very 1980s US west-coast suburbia.

georgeoliver• 11 years ago

As a carpenter living in the western US (where platform wood framing dominates) I'm curious about why masonry building is the norm in England. Is it simply lack of forest/wood products?

markvdb3• 11 years ago

I'm not an expert, but here is my speculation. Historically, in many parts of Europe, wooden housing was cheap housing. In many places, only they rich could afford stone houses.

Several cities, seeing wood as a fire risk, even until this day have rules that forbid new wooden construction.

Then there's also the fact that streets are organised in a totally different way in many European cities. US visitors sometimes tell me they feel a bit claustrophobic in the streets of my native city. They _are_ quite a bit narrower than the average US street, and they're all townhouses built right next to one another.

Oh, and older generations seem to spontanuously associate wooden barracks with soldiers, prisoners of war and cheap post war emergency housing.

The tide is turning though, with wood and even straw building gaining in popularity year by year in many of the EU countries that I regularly visit...

A_COMPUTER• 11 years ago

Wasn't the island almost completely deforested? People have mentioned that here before. I wonder if it's connected.

rwmj• 11 years ago

When my house was built (probably 1920-ish) labour must have been very cheap, because the construction method is very labour-intensive. The whole house is built of brick, with double walls even for interior walls, complex 4-breasted chimney (brick also), windows with inlaid brick patterns, and so on. Since hundreds of thousands of these kind of houses were built around that time[1], there must have been armies of people involved.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/sep/10/metroland-100-...

bainsfather• 11 years ago

Interesting. When I first heard about modern people living in wooden houses I thought 'are they crazy? Why would someone be invest their life savings in buying a wooden house? Surely they cannot last very long'. I think it is because the climate is very different.

I live in northern England at about 1000' (fairly high by english standards). It rains a lot, and the rain tends to be more horizontal than vertical. Outside, untreated wood rots fast from the damp. Treated wood (e.g. windowframes) need repainting every 2nd year, and even so parts of them rot and need replacing every 25 years or so.

The houses near here are mostly 200-400 years old and built of local gritstone from quarries that are a few hundred yards away. The walls are as good as when they are built (the exteriors need re-pointing every ~40 years or so). The roofs (grey(stone) slate) need re-doing maybe every ~40 years when the timbers sag.

The buildings I have made (house extension, outbuildings) will still be standing 400 years from now.

The comments about shortage of timber might also have some validity - there were/are hardwoods here, but not much - unlike in the US or New Zealand, where you had large forests on your doorsteps.

gcb0• 11 years ago

all you can see on streetview: private property signs.

doesn't feel very anarchist to me.

https://goo.gl/maps/JRUfk7ZRaHo

floydnoel• 11 years ago

Several types of anarchists believe in private property.

Life in Walter Segal's self-build 'anarchist' estate

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