Architecture or revolution, wrote Le Corbusier - the Pope of Modernism. Of course, architects have as much power to prevent revolutions as to start them: little. However, they can (but very rarely) design buildings and the entire construction process in such a way as to raise awareness that other ways of designing, building and living are possible: more egalitarian and more emancipatory. The rest is up to the inhabitants.
Perhaps the most interesting of such participatory construction methods, related to the creation of small estates of detached houses, terraced houses and small multi-family buildings, was presented in the 1970s in England by Walter Segal. The Segal method*, which this book describes, is a way of socialised design and construction of houses that treats these processes in a comprehensive way. Its main principle is to simplify the construction and building technology so that inexperienced builders - future residents - can build houses according to their individual needs and possibilities at a low cost.
Knowledge of such methods is important for us today, in Poland, because it proposes alternative methods for increasing the stock of available housing - the scarcest and, at the same time, the most needed. Knowledge of this method is important for us also because it is possible to apply it here and now, which this publication tries to prove.
Mateusz Gierszon - Doctor of Technical Sciences, Graduate of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Krakow University of Technology, co-owner of EMA studio. He is interested in widely understood ecology in architecture, both in the sense of resource conservation and minimization of the negative impact of a building on its surroundings as well as social ecology. He is interested in participation, self-help and development of local communities through the construction process, for which reason he is fascinated by low-tech technologies.
