126 Almere Homeruskwartier, the largest self-building district in post-war Netherlands PHOTO: ADRIENNE NORMAN Phantom Urbanism – No Choice The Ghost Towns of Angola over our p 52 Impressions from Almere Heads – p 134 Self-building Better than in Almere It Was – The 127 Make Architecture Remarkable Great Again – The Transformation Architect as Developer of Tirana p 66 p 86 Simple Jacqueline Answers to Simple Questions – The Architect Tellinga as Client p 118 The Land Belongs to the People – The Battle for Munich p 94 Building one’s own house may have become an exception in the West, but in the Nether- lands this practice has made a serious comeback since the crisis of 2008. In the city of Almere, founded a mere forty years ago and currently the country’s seventh largest city, self-building has come to 128 represent a viable alternative within a developer-led mar- ket. Jacqueline Tellinga, board member of the Profes- sional Association of Dutch Urban Designers and Planners (BNSP), argues the case for self-building. tively cheap. Berlin is known creasingly concentrated in everyone to participate and amongst investors as the Aldi the hands of a few. Power is acquire wealth. In his view, of the housing market and, as inevitably in the same hands. non-freedom and inequality a result, home prices have Nowhere is this felt more are the norm, which have only come under serious pressure. acutely than in the housing been successfully broken The German situation is de- market, in which the energy of down in societies where peo- scribed clearly in the ARD re- people who want to invest in ple organised themselves I port 'Ungleichland', which fol- their own homes and living from the bottom up. In such lows multi-millionaire investor environment is routinely sup- exceptionally equal socie- and project developer Chris- planted by those better or- ties, in which power is no toph Gröner, who trades in ganised and more powerful, longer exclusively in the In ancient times we did not real estate with the sole pur- which in turn has led to pleas hands of a king, nobility or know any better than that cit- pose of ‘making capital work’ to open up the housing mar- any elite, a truly open market ies were built by citizens them- on behalf of the anonymous ket to small-scale, individual can flourish. Currently, how- selves. Most of the houses wealthy. participants. In this context, ever, he argues that we are in along Amsterdam's canals Developments such as those reference should be made to a time of declining freedom from the 17th century, for in- in Berlin and in Amsterdam the book 'The Invisible Hand? and equality. “We must pre- stance, were built by private imply fundamental changes How Market Economies Have serve the good of markets, but individuals for private use. To- in terms of the quality of life Emerged and Declined Since we must counteract the domi- day, prosperous cities like Am- and general affordability of AD 500' by economic histori- nance of the elites.” sterdam are firmly on the radar neighbourhoods in these cit- an Bas van Bavel.2 In this book of international capital and ies. Neighbourhoods where he argues that important mar- Utopian models and the same houses primarily the maximisation of rental in- ket economies, after initial micro-societies serve as investment opportu- come has become the prime periods of emergence and nities for third parties. The phe- motive generally suffer from a prosperity are inevitably fol- Having extensively worked on nomenon of buy-to-let, high turnover of inhabitants lowed by a period of decay. the development of self-built through which investors buy up and therefore slowly lose their He proves his point with three neighbourhoods, I see a ten- existing homes with the aim to connection to the area. Buy- major, pre-industrial exam- dency to increasingly push rent them out expensively – to-let leads to a housing stock ples of successful market self-builders out of the 'so- generally after having split owned by the wealthy, who do economies in western Eurasia: called’ market. Their legitima- them up into separate apart- not live there themselves and Iraq in the early Middle Ages, cy is still very much ques- ments – is firmly entrenched. push up prices in the mean- Italy in the high Middle Ages, tioned. 129 time. Even more problematic and the Low Countries in the For those interested in the cor- is the ‘buy-to-leave’ phenom- late Middle Ages and the ear- relation between self-reli- Make enon, where investors deliber- ly modern period, and then ance and social engage- ately do not want to rent out draws parallels with England ment, I would briefly like to Architecture and cause vacancy rates be- and the United States in the discuss three examples of cause tenants could be a diffi- modern period. self-built developments: the Great cult obstacle to a quick resale. The process is invariably the projects of Walter Segal, ‘Bau- same: in their early phases, gruppen’, and allotment gar- Again – these market economies tend dens. Phantom to generate growth, reward During the 1970s and 1980s, The Archi- initiative and entrepreneur- two hundred families in the Urbanism – ship and increase labour pro- United Kingdom single-hand- tect as ductivity. During this early edly built their homes, using The Ghost phase, major technological the system of pioneering ar- Developer leaps takes place. But then, chitect Walter Segal. What p 66 Towns with the emergence of new connected these people was elites – inevitably a conse- that they were all entrepre- of Angola quence of the initial success – neurial, but none of them had In 2017 one of every eight the rules of the game change. enough money for a private homes in Amsterdam was p 52 The new elites become a home. They opted for Segal’s bought by investors1 (The re- self-serving political force, in- prototype design – a wooden search into major property In China, the point has been equality increases and the frame, with insulation and a owners in Amsterdam is based reached that the government earlier economic develop- weatherproof shell – which on public information from the not only finds it bad for the ment stagnates. Once those was a quick and economical Land Registry). housing market, but also im- elites get hold of two of the way of building. None of the Amsterdam is not the only moral to speculate with hous- three factors of production – people had technical skills, place affected by this trend. ing rather than living in it. Pres- land and capital – the rest of but they simply rolled up their German cities too, with their ident Xi Jinping is committed the population is left with only sleeves, went to work in their comparatively cheap real es- to a mandatory cooling of the the ability to provide work – own time and acquired the tate, have been discovered as housing market. the third factor of production necessary knowledge along profitable piggy banks for – and falls behind. Van Bavel’s the way. Segal's construction capital-seeking yield, par- The Invisible Hand? observations clash with the system was a way to build af- ticularly because their real neoliberal idea of the market fordably and led to extensive estate, compared to cities like In the twenty-first century, pri- as a neutral mechanism, cooperation and a vibrant London and Paris, is still rela- vate equity has become in- which supposedly allows community spirit. Everybody would work on their individual Another form of community Houses and gardens are pri- rectly to its citizens, and was homes, but when it was time to spirit and far-reaching self- vate; the property rights of set in motion with the Ikbouw- erect the main frame for a sin- regulation are the allotment which are not shared within mijnhuisinAlmere programme gle house, the whole group gardens dating back to the the group. of 2006. would come together and beginning of the 20th century. Self-building should not pri- The Homeruskwartier firmly help. To date, no one has been These unique micro-societies marily be judged on the merit calls into question the legiti- able to come up with a good are also organised as a col- of creating closer social com- macy of the collusion be- explanation why these de- lective. As a small communi- munities. The essence is in the tween cities and professional signs never went mainstream ty, the members adhere to an economic logic it unleashes – developers and indicates the – either as social housing or as extensive code of conduct on in that it mobilises the means keenness on the part of ordi- private developments. a voluntarily basis. The man- and the thinking power of tens nary people to produce their The Baugruppen in Germany agement and accountability or hundreds of thousands of own houses without the inter- are a similar idea. In the 1990s, of the individual towards the which is inevitably a source of mediaries. Here, people show how they want to live and build for themselves once they are really given the free- dom to do so. Simple Answers to Simple Questions – The Architect as Client p 118 A rich mix of living ideas has been achieved on a variety of 130 plots. Thanks to brochures and Homeruskwartier 2016. The first 350 plots came on the market just before the financial crisis. While private developers ‘plot passports’, those inter- began to suffer a lack of equity, self builders continued to invest and build. Jacqueline Tellinga has been ‘concept ested were able to make their en gebiedsontwikkelaar’ Homeruskwartier 2006 – 2015.