Lessons of Architecture Without Architects in Pécs, Hungary

… “Making Space for a …, 2009

This paper attempts to explain the nature of home-making as a complex process implicit in house building for the urban poor. It aims to draw attention to the important activity that drives the acts of house building and makes home meaningful. The paper shows an outline of the process of home-making from the perspective of the urban poor and explains the desires and processes involved.

Technium Social Sciences Journal

Facades are perceived as such a body shape in their urban surrounding, their beauty and significance are felt through the impact we feel towards their representativity and shape’s features. The aesthetic of the buildings’ facades has been a subject study for a set of researchers that tried to adjust the significance of expressions that deal with an aesthetic concept that is characterized by subjectivity. This is by identifying the physical properties of the interface that are most affecting the behavior of the recipient by acceptance, in order to rely on them objectively during the design process. How can we define then the aesthetic meanings and perceptions of buildings’ facades and their components among their users, especially in self-construction housing neighborhoods? Considering them as users, creators and they helped the architects in their design. Its own aesthetics is the reflection of a certain socio-cultural level, besides a certain knowledge and experience that are respo...

In the world of alternative housing, Strasbourg is an important player. Here, Anne Debarre and Hélène Steinmetz describe the stimulating process that has given rise to a growing number of selfbuild housing developments in and around the city. 1 Research financed by PUCA (the French interministerial Urban Development, Construction and Architecture Plan) and conducted between 2008 and 2010 by Anne Debarre and Hélène Steinmetz. The material collected comprises interviews with groups, urban planners, architects, elected representatives and municipal departments in and around Strasbourg; private archives made available by groups; observations of internal and public meetings; and a review of grey literature on the subject.

2012

In modern urban areas, housing delivery has become a huge industry. Professionals are largely involved in design, management, construction, and maintenance stages. However, in many parts of urban areas in the world, owners still exercise considerable control over these stages. This is more applicable in self-built houses, especially in developing countries, where housing supply by public and private developers lag substantially than the demand. In self-built houses, owners who generally belong to low or low-medium income groups, manage their own time and resources, and exercise their own skill in all of these stages. Many studies have highlighted this as a natural phenomenon. However, in current changing dense urban situations, professional help might be a key to build up a healthy urban development. Considering the design stage, a twofold question can be asked; whether the owners are ready for professional help, or the professionals are ready to help them. Focusing on the first perspective, with the help of a combination of 5-point Likert-scale questionnaire survey and open-ended interviews with owners in self-built houses in Dhaka, the study tries to answer that. It finds that there still exists significant communication gap between the two parties when it comes to making a decision to hire professional architects.

This paper is an exploration of the settlement patterns and vernacular types of housing in Saraylı and Orcun villages in Kocaeli, Turkey. Despite the causes in spatial transformation of the region, i.e. rapid industrial development, urbanisation and the 1999 Izmit earthquake, both villages have preserved the traces of vernacular architecture and settlement patterns of which the roots go back to the cultural heritage of ancient Rome and Byzantium. The research, we conducted between 2008 and 2010, was carried out by both sociologists and architects in the field.