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visiting the siedlung kalscheurer weg

listening to gerardo brown-manrique

preparing for a talk on self-build by anne-julchen bernhardt

examining the orginal s-hhs drawings

reviewing first ideas with thomas kröger

building elements of the s-hhs protoype

the self-help housing system (S⁠-⁠HHS)

In 1969, oswald mathias ungers moved from his job at the technical university of berlin to cornell university. student protests had impacted heavily on his teaching in berlin and his project for the märkisches viertel, a large-scale housing development at the outskirts of berlin, had been hit by harsh criticism of mass housing in the media. in the us, ungers continued his research on building systems for housing. however, he entered a process of reflection and reassessment.¹ It is in this context that the design for the self-help housing system took shape. as a studio project, it was also decisively influenced by a climate of social change in light of the civil rights movement and student protests, which called for a restructuring of architectural education and production.

a previous studio project at cornell had realized an initial exploration of modular housing types made from timber elements.

dome in drop city (south colorado) (collected by the ungers for their research on communes)

with this project, ungers participated in a competition held as part of the “operation breakthrough” program, a government initiative to improve prefabricated building construction on a large scale, in 1969. however, ungers’ proposal was unsuccessful and was not developed any further in this context.

the s-hhs was built on the general layout of the previous project, but placed a stronger focus on bottom-up processes and organizational contexts. it was to provide modest housing notably for people on a low income or living in economically disadvantaged rural areas. the houses (or housing units) were designed to be built by the prospective users themselves from prefabricated wooden elements made with standard timber. the construction process required a minimum of tools, and followed the principle of a “growing house”. the building components were modular and could be arranged into different layouts.

modular housing prototype (half scale) (oswald mathias ungers with gerardo brown-manrique and others, ithaka 1972)

the project took its meaning from the processes it was designed to initiate: members of afro-american communities were supposed to be involved in the manufacturing of the building components. this was part of a larger educational program which was to help break the predominance of white people in the trade unions.² moreover, the production process was to be placed under the auspices of the later inhabitants. at the university and beyond, the s-hhs was embedded in a network of initiatives aimed at creating social change. as a consequence of its very specific production and construction contexts, the design was not realized as a conventional set of plans. instead, it appeared in the form of a booklet with a building instruction manual.

s-hhs prototype floor plans and elevations (oswald mathias ungers with gerardo brown-manrique and others, ithaka 1972)

s-hhs prototype connection details (oswald mathias ungers with gerardo brown-manrique and others, ithaka 1972)

just prior to the project at cornell, oswald mathias and his wife liselotte ungers travelled across the united states studying utopian communities in the usa. their research was published in 1972 under the title “communes in the new world 1740–1972”.³ ungers’ interest in this project may have been to study spatial layouts and establish a typology of communal settlements. similar to the s-hhs, the communes were social units which had grown out of group initiatives of shared interests or moral systems instead of being planned by architects, planners and public authorities as an abstract system for anonymous users. the question was how the built forms of the communes mirrored the shared aspect of community and thus differed from a top-down planning approach.

production of s-hhs components in trade school wood shop (courtesy of gerardo brown-manrique)

the self-help housing system can be interpreted as a tool to reorganize the social based on the ideal of self-help and community action. It departed from the bottom-up approach and incorporated organizational questions into architecture and architectural education. treating architecture as a device for education, self-help and empowerment, the project promised to give agency to socially or racially disempowered parts of the population.

footnotes

1. see andré bideau, “housing as discursive void: oswald mathias ungers in the 1960s and 1970s”, in: Candide. Journal for Architectural Knowledge No. 07 (Oct. 2013), pp. 61–88. Jasper Cepl, Oswald Mathias Ungers: Eine intellektuelle Biographie (Cologne: Walther König, 2007), pp. 243–280.

2. we owe this insight to Gerardo Brown-Manrique, who participated in the project as a student at Cornell university and figured as the project designer.

introduction to the final presentation

the summer school studied oswald mathias ungers’ project for a self-help housing system (s-hhs) along with liselotte and oswald mathias ungers’ research on communes in the united states. while the former was more architectural and departed from the assumptions of social housing and modular construction typologies, the latter was more interested in communal life and forms of togetherness. our discussions in the summer school focused on how these two concurrent projects could be brought into a dialog. we analyzed texts and drawings, visited and discussed other self-build and community projects, and explored the historical and theoretical contexts. finally, we searched for suitable media in order to present our ideas and negotiate ungers’ design in light of contemporary issues.

reviewing the results of the summer school

three different positions took shape during the discussions:

how do the fluid and multiple identities of digital societies interact with ungers’ prototype?

ekin başkentli, issa driesen, daria nazarenko and fabian singler looked at how the technology of self-help and self-build structures can still produce the spaces new communal and individual identities need. to address these issues, films showing the production of individuality and formations of communal life were projected onto an axonometric line drawing of ungers’ self-build prototype.

axonometric section of the s-hhs prototype

“communities are formed by individuals with diverse backgrounds and interests. so it is fair to ask how communities would change and adapt a space they are occupying according to their needs and interests. how do different backgrounds influence their way of living? as a group, we concentrated on how specific communities are shaped by their way of living and imagined different communities living in the unit designed by ungers. we analyzed four different communities: digital, religious, punk, and refugee. the diversity of these groups allows us to look at how much a designed module in these circumstances is really needed.”

What are the interrelations between built structures and shared intentions or aims?

Martha Delagrange, Gjiltine Isufi, Aljoscha Lahner, Maria Loriti, Fiachra McCarthy and Laura Renard were interested in the TYPOLOGIES of self-build and community housing. they established a matrix to contextualize ungers’ ideas developed in his s-hhs in a broader framework.

introducing the matrix of self-build projects

“comparing the projects reveals certain correlations. some are built out of a need for affordable housing or for emergency housing, others follow an ideal, such as creating a community, developing a live-in work of art or integrating a self-sustaining community into the eco-system. 

in the case of affordable housing, emphasis is often given to the feasibility of building the houses, which are to be made by the inhabitants, to strengthen the community. there are however very few shared spaces and facilities. when the focus is on the creation of a community, there are a lot more communal facilities and forms vary from ready-made buildings to more experimental structures. ungers’ self-help housing system has the potential to work both ways, as it is designed to be easily built and the structures can house different functions and shared facilities.”

Is self-expression possible in a modular housing system?

VINCENT NUYTS, KONSTANTIN TRAUTMANN, DAAN VANBRABANT and TOM VANDORMAEL were attracted to ungers’ morphological work on lines, planes and volumes. in their performative installation, they analyzed how the perceived qualities of these abstract notions can be reenacted, and projected them onto the corridor space of ungers’ self-help housing system. they described their installation as follows:

elements of the corridor of the s-hhs prototype

“self-building construction in a defined grid.

communal explorations of space. supplied by re-used constructing materials.