# SELF-CONSTRUCTION /// Tungkwan

Another example of self-construction in Bernard Rudofsky's Architecture without Architects.

Dwellings below, fields upstairs

One of the most radical solutions in the field of shelter is represented by the underground towns and villages in the Chinese loess belt. Loess is silt, transported and deposited by the wind. Because of its great softness and high porosity (45 per cent), it can be easily carved. In places, roads have been cut as much as 40 feet deep into the original level by the action of wheels.
The photographs show settlements of the most rigorous, not to say abstract, design near Tungkwan (Honnan). The dark squares in the flat landscape are pits an eighth of an acre in an area, or about the size of a tennis court. Their vertical sides are 25 to 30 feet high. L-shaped staircases lead to the apartmments below whose rooms are about 30 feet deep and 15 feet wide, and measure about 15 feet to the top of the vaulted ceiling. They are lighted and aired by openings that give onto the courtyard. "One may see smoke curling up from the fields" writes George B. Cressey in his Land of the 500 million: A geography of China, even though there is no house in sight; "such land does double duty, with dwellings below and fields upstairs." The dwellings are clean and free of vermin, warm in winter and cool in summer. Not only habitations but factories, schools, hotels and goverment offices are built entirely underground.

# Yona Friedman's exhibition

Yona Friedman's work is currently exhibited in la Galerie Kamel Mennour in Paris (47 rue Saint André des Arts). This exhibition, running until january 31st is about La Ville Spatiale represents as a first chapter, Friedman's early work when february will host his new work.
One piece, definitely not to miss is a little cartoon about how human perception of the world is definite by his eyes' focus.

As a former post, read the interview Martin and I did for our thesis last year (only available in French unfortunately).

# SELF-CONSTRUCTION /// I.A.A.C. 2nd Advanced Architecture Contest

Last Issue of the I.A.A.C. Institue of (Advanced Architecture of Catalunya) architecture 2007-2008 competition was about "self fab sustainable housing", following you'll will see the 3 prizes that have been decerned to international students/architects.

Awarded projects:

1st Prize: F1C243
Ming Tang
Dihua Yang
CHINA
This proposal uses a traditional local material, implementing geometry elements in a pertinent way creating structures able to transform and re-inform themselves . The jury values its landscape integration and the possibility of being constructed as prototype.

2nd Prize: 5923BC
Luis Aguirre Manso
SPAIN
The jury values the hybridisation of light construction systems that rise from the ground, and the
functional scheme surrounding the chimney, that follows principles of traditional architecture.

3rd Prize: C2BD4E
Shinya OKUDA
Kung Yick Ho Alvin
Lam Yan Yu Ian
HONG KONG
The jury values the use of advanced technologies in the manipulation of biodegradable materials to create a system that can be assembled as a sustainable construction.

1st prize:





2nd prize:



you can see better picture of the second prize wich is for me the most interesting : here




3rd prize:

# SELF-CONSTRUCTION /// Robert Neuwirth's shadow cities

One of self-construction's motivation comes from the fact that it is difficult for the authority to control and thus, sometimes its illegal existence for a more or less important time. That is one of the topics tackled by Robert Neuwirth in his book, Shadow cities. A billion squatters, a new urban world. In fact, for his research, this author lived for a while in one of Rio's favelas and other illegal district in Nairobi (Kenya), Mumbai (India) and Istanbul (Turkey). For each city, he is interested in observing how these districts' inhabitants manage to negociate with their environment's illegal existence thanks to a bypass or an interpretation of the law, which allow their juridical eviction to be more difficult. That is how we learn that, a Turkish law affirms that an illegal building in construction can be destroyed immediately whereas, an achieved building could only be demolished after judiciary proceedings. Therefore a lot of buildings are built very quickly during the night, to limitate as possible the vulnerability period. It is then interesting to observe how the bypass of law influence architecture and become a collective tacit knowledge which rules the district organisation.

# SELF-CONSTRUCTION /// Straw as a building material

Following you will find few pictures of self constructed houses builded with straw, most of time those buildings got a very poor architecturale quality...

But I think this building technics wich is, about sustainibility, thermic and cost specially , one of the most interesting, and it's just at the beguinning of its reality as a real construction material, I hope that in the coming months/years we will see more experimetation with that material.

More over its really easy to find individuals sites following this kind of self construction initiatives.
By now the major probleme of that technic (straw bale+clay) is that needs a lot of handwork to apply the clay on the straw walls, so if your interested in building one in yourbackyard, you had better to have lot of enthousiastic friends or a big familly!


If you saw a cool straw building let us now we are interesting to publish it on Boiteàoutils !



this one have been designed by HOK ,(found on inhabitat.com more here)

# Comments issue

I would like to inform our readers that there use to be a problem with the comments since the time when boiteaoutils started. Comments are now available and open to debate topics and issues presented.

# Concrete spicules !

Those who know me, may understand why I like so much those concrete tetrapods used for japanese reefs. Their shapes allow them to constitute an aggregate structure without any binding and easily removable and transformable.
I know that a house might have been built with them but could not find it, so if anybody knows a bit more about it, I'd be interested to have these informations. Thanks.

# Sleep dealer by Alex Rivera

This Mexican movie (currently released in some theatres in France) presents US and Mexico's relationships around 2030. The Wall is more hermetic than ever, United States restrain the water stock and propose to Mexicans to work for American companies by a plug-in system in the body which allows workers to transfer their energies to the other side of the border.
Let's face it, computer images are awful and I personally doubt that the movie's (small) budget was well organised. However, issues are interesting and the vision of a future where environment is not so different from nowadays and where innovation essentialy comes from networks is pretty convincing.

# SELF-CONSTRUCTION /// "Shelter" edited By Lloyd Kahn

After Rudofski's "architecture without architects", If there one book about self-construction, for sure it's Shelter! Its a collection of buildings technics, uses and tricks from all over the world. More over it's a best seller, First published in 1973, it already have been published 3 or 4 times! for me that book is the manisfesto of self-construction and it's a reference for anyone that try one day to build a small shelter, treehouse or whatever : It's a must have in your own library!
In times past people built their own homes, grew their own food, made their own clothes. Knowledge of the building crafts and other skills of providing life's basic needs were generally passed along from father to son, mother to daughter, master to apprentice.

Then with industrialization and the population shift from country to cities, this knowledge was put aside and much of it has now been lost. We have seen an era of unprecedented prosperity in America based upon huge amounts of foreign and domestic resources and fueled by finite reserves of stored energy.

And as we have come to realize in recent years, we are running out. Materials are scarce, fuel is in short supply, and prices are escalating. To survive, one is going to have to be either rich or resourceful. Either more dependent upon, or freer from centralized production and controls. The choices arc not clear-cut, for these are complex times. But it is obvious that the more we can do for ourselves, the greater will our individual freedom and independence be.

This book is not about going off to live in a cave and growing all one's own food. It is not based on the idea that everyone can find an acre in the country, or upon a sentimental attachment to the past. It is rather about finding a new and necessary balance in our lives between what can he done by hand and what still must be done by machine.

For in times to come, we will have to find a responsive and sensitive balance between the still-usable skills and wisdom of the past and the sustainable products and inventions of the 20th century.

Of necessity or by choice, there may be a revival of handwork in America. We are certainly capable, and these inherent, dormant talents may prove to be some of our most valuable resources in the future.

This book is about simple homes, natural materials, and human resourcefulness. It is about discovery, hard work, the joys of self-sufficiency, and freedom. It is about shelter, which is more than a root overhead.

– Lloyd Kahn, 1973

the blog of Lloyd KAHN : here

by the same guys you got "home made", "the Dome book" and other 70's goodies! : here

# Usman Haque and granularity

I recently met Usman Haque in London and got the chance to talk with him about his work and I'll be trying here to make an article about it.

Usman Haque is a Bartlett graduated architect who tries to increase human participation in architecture. Too many people confuse technology and interaction he says, himself always trying to create some human engaging interaction more than determinist technology.
The ambiguity consist then in using the same tools than the illusion of so called intelligent environments. Humans are far more adaptable than the technique. That is why he designs environment where sensors, instead of being considered as owners of an inherent logic, tend to propose what seems to be an irrational behaviour which must be learnt indistinctly by humans in order to control it. This is how he tries to achieve to change relationships between people and their environment and also change the way urban designers are conceiving this same environment.
In fact, he develops the concept of granularity as the resolution of different entries to the system:

There are two important limits to the idea of a collaborative design system in architecture. First, the more "open" a system is, the more bewildering it is for those who are introduced to it anew. In a design system in particular, people are often aided at first, not hindered, by having constraints applied to them -- the real key is to find a way that the constraints are not necessarily absolute: if the constraints themselves can be modified over time then that really helps in fostering on-going participation. The user-configured comment-moderating system employed by Slashdot.org is a good example of this process. Second, I don't believe that it's possible to construct a "totally open system" -- the very nature of a "system" (which is a description of a set of relationships, dependent in all cases upon a particular subjective approach) precludes it. There will always be processes that involve "top-downness" and "bottom-upness" -- the key to helping perpetuate the design and evolution of such environments is to ensure that the relationship between the two is not frozen.
In this context it's important in particular to ensure a varied *granularity* of participation: different people have different interests or skillsets, are willing to participate to a greater or lesser degree, or desire to effect smaller or larger impact on the entity being constructed. Everyone will have their own point at which they wish to engage with something, so it's vital that a wide variety of entry points is available.

This is actually the basis of a manifest for an open source urban design he wrote with the writer/programmer Matthew Fuller, called Urban Versioning system (read below).

Open Burble

Reconfigurable house

Evolving sonic environment

Floatabales

Urban Versioning System 1.0.1

By Matthew Fuller and Usman Haque
(this is a small version but you can read longer one HERE)

Preamble

The production of structures to articulate, produce and protect space, often coded under the disciplinary term 'architecture' is arguably one of humanity's oldest activities. Countless technologies and legal frameworks have grown along with this process. Formerly one of the most collaborative endeavours, architecture now often functions in opposition to such collaboration.

Matthew Fuller and Usman Haque, a writer and architect respectively, propose that a lesson can be learned for architecture from the way in which software is made. Here, they concentrate on the current most significant mode of software development, Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS). The rigorous set of approaches to software development in FLOSS, formulated as a set of freedoms, are here suggested as a point of inspiration.

The Free Software Definitioni states that free software contains the following freedoms articulated as an ethical rule-set. Since they are a set of contractual terms, they are set out as such

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour (freedom 2).

• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

A number of attempts have been made to transfer such principles to the making of objects. Often this has been done on the basis of plans, recipes, diagrams and other such 'genotypic' information. The key question here is how such strategies apply or can be modified to apply to the production of architecture.

In architecture there is no substance that is concurrently both "editable source code" (genotype) and "usable artefact" (phenotype). Though some have usefully argued that architectural drawings can be considered "source" and therefore it is the design process that must be opened up,ii one of the most interesting aspects of open source software is the continuous interleaving of production, implementation, usage and repurposing processes, all of which can and sometimes must be open – not just an "open design" that then gets implemented in a closed manner. Such an approach changes the place of aesthetics in architecture to one not of form, but of organisation.

We propose a license for the open source design and construction of cities. The Urban Versioning System quasi-license is not yet such a license. At the moment the document is more a dogma or set of constraints. It’s an oath, a quasi-license, something to chew on. It does not base itself on the genotype / phenotype split, though the distinction can be made: we want to see what happens if we work otherwise.

The Urban Versioning System quasi-license proposes the following seven initial constraints.

Seven Constraints

1. Build rather than design

We propose a new model for the production of cities, where design and planning are abandoned in favour of beginning immediately with building and construction. This new adhocismiii requires us to disregard any temptation to sketch, to plan, to model and above all to discard any desire to "brainstorm". All these activities can be performed on the actual materials we wish to build with, while the thought-processes directly engage with or become the lived-in artefact, articulated at a 1:1 scale.

Constructing right from the start erodes distinctions between design, modelling, construction and inhabitation. To design and build concurrently requires simultaneous tenancy. The building is the model. It enables us to produce real spatial situations we otherwise only imagine, and makes it possible for interested people to enter into, critique and add to what we is being realised in the world. We can discuss with materials – not representations of materials – and negotiate around connection points and the means of connection, rather than proffering a completed structure as a whole.

The problem is that architectural design can often simply be a process of predicting problems, removing obstacles and resolving all possible contradictions: the best situation, from the perspective of such an architect, is to have project documentation that is so complete that every aspect of construction (and occupancy) has been articulated and specified so that the eventual building construction contractor needs make no on-site decisions and simply has to follow orders to the letter. This process often leaves no room for future adaptation.

Building continuously rather than designing makes it clear that buildings are dynamic, responsive and variable and would encourage the development of robust technological frameworks that unite design, construction and occupancy.iv

2. Materials must come pre-broken

A seamless package is frustratingly daunting when it comes to enabling others to participate in the design and development of an artefact. However, a broken system is usually one that attracts the most attention, in part because it appeals to others' desire to "repair" and also because breaks can enable one to understand better how something should or could work.

With respect to opening up the urban design/construction process, and encouraging the reuse and repurposing of architectural artefacts, it is important to ensure that such structures and systems are released in a pre-broken condition. This might take one of several forms.

Materials that readily decompose can be said to be ecologically pre-broken. Those which rapidly decompose to a basic elemental or organic state, such as ice, iron, wood and silica rather than complex materials involving a high amount of adulteration are particularly interesting. Building with such materials requires constant innovation, replenishment and reconstruction and emphasises the ephemerality of architectural constructs, helping to counteract the usual architectural obsession with permanence.

Materials that are readily repairable, interrogable or hackable can be said to be pre-broken in terms of their use. Broken structures are not meant to last, they encourage reuse and repurposing and enable people to participate at a number of levels, depending on skills, desire and ambition. Failing this, power tools, hairpins and nail files prove useful in opening things up.

3. Make joints

We understand joints not only to be the things that hold things together, but also as the means by which an object connects to its outside and allows it to dream. We are interested in joints which function as forcing points of abstraction.

The joint is a point, conceptual as much as material, at which powers are mediated and confronted, the part that conjoins, spreads and transforms tensions. To continue our parallel with computing, interfaces, protocols, interpreters, compilers and screens are kinds of joints. Joints are entry points for supporting, contrasting or even opposing systems. Concentrating on the production of joints presupposes future amalgamation or integration with things, events and systems that are yet to occur.

A threshold is not a joint, a joint draws thresholds towards it. As such the joint is the structure’s defence against entropy, against simply becoming a pile. In doing so it allows the structure to conjugate both symmetry and asymmetry. Asymmetry of materials and of forces, and where wanted or found, symmetry of structure.

All entities under the UVS quasi-license must have more than one open joint available at any time. Opening but a single joint at any time will simply result in 'chain' structures. Two, three or more, result in a workable range of degrees of freedom.

4. Rubbish is the root of virtuosity

The more granularity an instrument offers the more it establishes the capability of proficient as distinct from perfunctory performance, and from there, the means by which it establishes a trajectory of possibility to infinite levels of brilliance. In this generosity, it also sets up an abundant capacity for incompetent performance. Equally, in releasing any construction to open development, it must be appreciated that design preciousness can result in aggravation and disappointment: the entity that you have nurtured since birth will be manipulated, botched and improved by others in ways that, if you retain sensations of ownership, might be difficult to bear.

People will, collaboratively, take a design in directions you could never have imagined, sometimes in ways that you think are utterly wrong. In order for the constraints associated with ownership not to impose such heartbreak, objects made under the UVS quasi-license are constrained to preserve a clear pathway that participants in builds can take. As in old guilds or current games, they would pass various levels from beginner/introductory/informal participation all the way to advanced/sophisticated/virtuoso participation. Free software projects often have a clear hierarchy of involvement and ways of making a contribution that require different levels of skills, from the relative beginner to the high-level expert. Modularity in this sense means arranging the development of a project in a way that allows productive involvement from large to small scales, from brief to long term periods, and that, in terms of expertise, encourages participation ranging from beginner to high-levels of sophistication.v

There is a meaningful granularity of participation that drives the most successful FLOSS projects. Whilst such qualities allow for multiple kinds of productive involvement, what is often missed in accounts of these structures is that in allowing for finely granular participation and incrementally difficult problem-setting, these projects also act as large scale learning environments. This would be quite a good definition for a city.

[note MB: the ‘Rubbish’ in the title does not discernibly reappear in the text. Needs explaining] ?-- UH: see new para at beginning of this section

5. Collaborate with collaborators

One way in which the question of objects and code is often articulated is that code allows for non-rivalrous use. A piece of software can be copied as many times as wanted without any loss of quality and without denying anyone else the ability to make such a copy. This is seen as being a key difference between the world of bits and that of atoms. Yet rivalry can find itself played out at many distinct scales.

An interesting consequence of the kinds of collaboration developed in FLOSS has been that enemies find themselves working on the same project. Companies who are in at least nominal rivalry with each other may build their businesses around shared code or use the sharing and development of such code as a way of developing an alternative platform to proprietary software in order to gain market share.

More notably, those in conflict in other ways may find themselves working together. Anarchists might find themselves contributing to a code-base also worked on by the United States military.

Such paradoxes are replayed in terms of construction in the interplay between the static and the changeable, between the learning built into interrogable technologies and the things that are taken for granted in designed ease of use. Builds using the UVS quasi-license will shelter and defend this paradox of collaboration, and be as much nurtured as they are confounded by it.

6. Copying or not copying is irrelevant

The UVS quasi-license recognises that the world is constructed by its inhabitants, at every moment of conception, inception and perception. When we talk about the public domain, we understand that the public is not some pre-existing fact. Publics must be made, indeed publics make themselves, and in so doing publics make domains that they refer to and through which they are mutually constitutive. The spatial technologies of such publics interweave fluctuating participation and capacities for organisational coherence.

The do-it-yourself (DIY) approach has been popularised, even pimped, recently by television shows which chart the progress of projects undertaken by homeowners or show how design professionals can advise people in upgrading existing homes themselves.

Rather than shying away from the conceptual difficulties offered by a system in which "anyone" can be a designer; where "copies" are as flawless as an "original"; where preciousness is not a desirable attribute; architects could embrace these concerns and seek ways to narrow the divide between the “designer” and the “designed-for”. Embrace the culture of the knock-off and of improvement.

The architect in this situation is therefore many things, not simply locatable in a single professional. The architect becomes a diagramming force, paradoxically both rule and rule generator determining the axioms that run through the process. Rather than being being locked into gatekeeping, this figure unleashes processes, encourages the flow of possibilities and modalities, works in a specific fashion on particular problems with certain sets of knowledge, learns and is often taken by surprise through the process.

7. Property must be invented

What we contemporarily understand as property is only what has been settled as such. Arguments that property takes on any particular natural form are unhelpful. Its visible artificiality is what makes it useful. What we encourage is an understanding of property as plastic, as historically contingent, and something to be experimented with or left as redundant. This means that there is no blueprint, provided by FLOSS or anything else, to follow religiously. It is a given that property is theft.

What we propose here is that the vocabulary of property generated by capitalism, especially in its neoliberal variants, is too rigid to allow for invention. In its application it has also proven itself to be incapable of allowing for a sustainable, let alone fully ecological, relationship between the societies it organizes and the life systems of the planet. In its application to the context of digital abundance, it has failed on its own terms, let alone those of the development of a viable and delightful digital culture. FLOSS has shown, in the domain of software, a way in which systems of property may be manipulated in order to set out a more pragmatic, useful and productive mode of operation.

All UVS builds must open the category of property up to their own speculative reinvention. These are not predetermined. Only a mode of construction that is capable of losing the plot is adequate.

---------------

This build is licensed under the Urban Versioning System v.1.0

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

i Free Software Foundation, The Free Software Definition, online at, http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html

For useful reflections on Free Software see, Christopher M. Kelty, Two Bits, the cultural siginificance of Free Software, Duke University Press, Durham NC, 2008

ii Dennis Kaspori, "A communism of ideas: towards an architectural open source practice", Archis #3, 2003; See also, The Open Architecture Network, http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/. Kaspori, often in collaboration with artist Jeanne van Heeswijk has developed some very significant moves towards a participatory architectural and planning practice, for instance in the Face Your World project which involved hundreds of people over several months in the redesign of a park in the Slotervaart suburb of Amsterdam http://www.faceyourworld.nl/. An early text which develops the political reading of architecture and open source software in a useful way is Brian Carroll, Open Source Architecture, online at, http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0006/msg00036.html

iii Charles Jencks & Nathan Silver, Adhocism, the case for improvisation, Anchor Press, London 1973

iv Extended Environments Markup Language, (http://www.eeml.org/) by one of the authors, is one attempt to extend IFC by describing the dynamic behaviour of sensors and actuators.

v This is the argument that is put forth in various ways the in following texts and elsewhere: Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks, Yale University Press, 2007; Daren C. Brabham, "Crowdsourcing as a model for problem solving: an introduction and cases", Convergence, the international journal of research into new media technologies, Vol 14, no.1 feb 2008, pp.75-90; Jeff Howe, "The Rise of Crowdsourcing", Wired, Vol. 14 No.6, online at, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html; Geert Lovink & Cristoph Spehr, 'Out-Cooperating The Empire?' in, Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter eds., My Creativity Reader, a critique of creative industries, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2007, pp.81-96; Cristoph Spehr, The Art of Free Cooperation, Autonomedia, New York, 2007

# SELF-CONSTRUCTION /// The air-conditionners of Hyperabad Sind

In Architecture without Architects, Bernard Rudofsky presents this example of a Pakistan city, Hyperabad Sind where a bunch of unique air-conditionners:

These unusual roofscapes are a prominent feature of the lower Sind district in West Pakistan. From April to June, temperatures range above 120°F, lowered vy an atternoon breeze to a pleasant 95°. To channel the wind into every building, "bad-gir", windscoops are installed on the roofs, one to each room. Since the wind always blowns from the same direction, the position of the windscoops is permanently fixed. In multistoried houses they reach all the way down, doubling as intramural telephones. Although the origin of this contraption is unknown, it has been in use for at least five hundred years.

# Futurism in Paris, an explosive avant garde in Beaubourg

Another very interesting current (until february 26th) exhibition in Pompidou Centre, is about how Italian futurism and French cubism influenced each other and eventually succeed to hybrid themselves during the beginning of the XXth century.

Is futurist in his life:
1. Whoever loves life, energy, joy, freedom, progress, novelty, functionality, speed.
2. Whoever acts with instantaneous energy and does not hesitate by cowardice.
3. Whoever, between two possible decisions, prefers the most generous one and the most daring one, towards improvement and individual and racial development.
4. Whoever acts joyfully always turn towards tomorrow, without any remorse, without any pedantry, without any fake reserve, without any mysticism and without any melancholy.
5. Whoever knows how to pass with agility from the most serious occupations to the most light distractions.
6. Whoever loves life outdoor, sport, gymnastics, and heal each day the nimble force of his own body.
7. Whoever knows, in useful times, to give a conclusive poke or slap

(translation is mine so it may not be perfect...)
Texts in Futurism are as important as painting or sculptures, therefore the bookshop ends the exhibition.
Almost a century after, it is very important for us to observe the futurist's captivation for innovation and artefacts and how, by what Walter Benjamin did prophesy as an esthetisation of politic, this art movement took part in fascism ideology and great support for war:

War ? Yes, war is our only hope, our reason for living, our only wish! Yes war ! War against you who die too slowly, and against all the dead bodies which block up our roads.

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Such intensity and integrity in art, is quite amazing to observe nowadays and I do recommend books which tried to gather all the futurist manifests (there are several !) like Jean-Pierre de Villiers' one which is unfortunately only in French...