via Graven Hill Village Development Company

现代自建社区对于建筑师的挑战
How Could Modern Self-Build Communities Challenge the Role of the Architect?

由专筑网李韧，王帅编译

“自建房”，顾名思义，就是没有建筑师，也没有其他任何人，这个概念源于史前的人类需求，人类的祖先需要建造他们的栖身之所，以满足他们的日常生活所需，同时也表达房主的地位和性格特征，因此“自建房”这一概念将人们与其住所联系起来。

然而，“自建房”这一概念却很少能够与我们的现代生活相提并论。例如征地困难、不符合相关部门的各项要求、建筑施工难度增加，这让自建房的建造愈发困难。这个想法非常纯粹，因此也有许多小策略能够帮助人们达到类似的效果。所以，为了鼓励人们自我建造，建筑师便扮演了相对重要的角色。

“Self-build”: no mention of an architect, or anyone else for that matter. Maybe it’s a prehistoric urge that makes this idea so enticing; our earliest ancestors constructed their primitive huts to suit their unique needs and reflect their status or style. “Self-build” promises to physically re-connect people to the homes they live in.
However, the romantic notion of "self-build" housing is rarely compatible with the modern reality we live in. Building has become increasingly clouded by the difficulty of procuring land, excessive governmental red-tape, and an increase in building complexity. While self-build remains the purest form of this dream, there are now a series of nuanced processes that can help us achieve similar results. As a new generation of communities that encourage this dream emerges, we must look at the role the architect plays within them.


via Graven Hill Village Development Company

回想起自建社区的源头，我们会发现，自建者一直属于自治的状态。在1979年，Walter Segal的“Walter’s Way”将建筑的设计限定于一些简单的策略，譬如“减少设计，让建筑回归本源”，亦或是“为自己而建造”。这些房屋可以用当地木材场找到的标准尺寸材料组装起来。这样的话建筑的布局能够按照需求减少或扩建，从而满足不同家庭的不同需求，另外也让建筑保持个人特征。换句话说，这样的建造方式也削弱了自我需求。“Walter’s Way”是一种实验性方式，让你能够更好地了解自己的住宅，因为这一过程并没有建筑师或施工方。

然而，这种自建住宅的一个因素是建筑师，换句话说，就是设计专业人员。建筑师能够有效地减少理想与现实之间的差距，能够更好地实现内心想法。

Looking back on the origins of the modern self-build community, we can see that self-builders retained almost complete autonomy. In 1979, Walter Segal’s "Walter’s Way" limited the designs of the houses to strict but simple principles, “reducing design and architecture to its essentials” and enabling “ordinary people to build for themselves.” The houses could be assembled with standard sizes of material found at the local lumber yard, while the layout could be expanded and altered to suit the growing family’s needs, with each house maintaining the unique characteristics of its owner. In one sense, this is architecture working to erase the need for itself. "Walter’s Way" was an experiment in being intimately hands-on with your home, without the need for an architect or builder of any kind.
One of the main issues with this kind of self-build community is that architects, by definition, are specialists in design. An architect should be able to reduce the gap between a person’s ideal living space and the living space that they eventually create for themselves, and should be a desirable asset to the realization of one's dream.


via Graven Hill Village Development Company

Graven Hill是英国最大的小镇，也是对Walter’s Way最为理想的诠释。项目位于牛津外部地区，人们可以“通过自己的设想和预算”在1.88平方公里的范围内自建社区，社区内大约包含1900座家庭住宅，其中30%是经济适用房，以及2000个工作岗位。

设计方案结合了多种不同大小的地块，形成多样化的社区形式，乡间小道、城市道路、乡村中心、林荫大道、环形铁路、洼地公园，以及社区街道等将居民区分割成多种类型。

Graven Hill—the largest town of its kind in the UK—is a modern interpretation of the Walter’s Way ideal. Located just outside Oxford, it allows individuals the ability to design a home “limited only by their imagination and their budget” within its 1.88-square-kilometer "self-build community," and has the capacity to create 1,900 homes (30% of which are planned to be affordable housing) and 2,000 jobs.
The scheme’s design code mixes different plot sizes together to create a diverse, engaged community and splits the residential areas into multiple typologies: rural lanes, urban lanes, village center, tree-lined boulevard, circular railway, swale parks and community streets.


via Graven Hill Village Development Company

乡间小道形成村落的边界，并且与周边的环境相匹配，另外，在村落的中央位置有一些极具创新思维的设计作品。不同类型的建筑都与场地的社区和周边环境保持独特的联系，让村民们不仅能够拥有自己所渴望的住宅，同时也能过上心中的理想生活。

The rural lanes give the village a controlled, conservative border to match the surrounding vernacular, allowing the more adventurous designs to be partially hidden closer to the village core. Each typology offers a unique relationship with the community and surrounding environment, giving the hopeful resident full control over not only the house, but also the life, that they wish to create.


via Graven Hill Village Development Company


via Graven Hill Village Development Company

然而在Graven Hill，自建住宅成为了一系列设计方案的保护措施，挑战了住房市场的不公平现象，因为这些现象在过去半个世纪中曾普遍存在。这些方案大致能够分为三个主要类型，每个类型都有建筑师的参与，其中有定制建造、设计建造，以及模块化住宅。

定制建造方式是这些社区中的常见手法，该方式主要的使用对象是建筑师的客户们。因此建筑师在这种方式中有着很高的参与度，而此类建筑也常常能够直接反应客户的性格，也能表达建筑师的创新性思维。荷兰自建住宅社区Almere便是一个经典的例子。个性化设计使得项目业主和周边居民都能获益，这也表达了在过去几十年中，郊区化住房的又一适应性选择。

However, at Graven Hill, self-build has become an umbrella term for a variety of procurement and design options which seek to challenge the injustices of the housing market as it has existed for the last half-century. These options can be separated into three main categories, each with a different level of involvement from the architect: custom-build, design-and-build, and kit houses.
Custom-build is a common practice in these communities, and the term is used to describe when the homeowner is the architect’s client. The architect maintains a high level of involvement in this scenario, usually leading to unique moments of architecture that reflect the personality of the homeowner, as well as the experience and flair of the designer. Almere—the Dutch self-build town upon which Graven Hill was based—is a great example of a custom-build mentality. The individual designs have made the neighborhood a huge success with both residents and onlookers, highlighting an alternative to the cut-and-paste estates that have defined suburbanization in previous decades.


© Wikimedia user Leuk2 licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

虽然诸如Almere的自建社区逐渐流行，但是建筑业在设计建造方面仍然有一些转变。这些事务所建造和概念设计方式提供了一站式服务，其中的逻辑在于，一些业主能够保留自己的想法，同时，建造的时间和预算都便于掌控。虽然不可否认的是，住宅的设计与建筑师息息相关，但是有时也有特例，建筑师对项目来说非常重要，但是也并非不可或缺。

模块化住宅则将这一策略发挥到了极致，完全将建筑师和客户分隔开，从而降低了施工时间和成本花费。这种方式于20世纪流行于美国，类似于Walter’s Way的自建房起源策略虽然这样的设计方式便于控制，但是在这种情况下，业主的创造性思维却被抑制。有的建筑事务所已经意识到这种方式所存在的问题，因为人们就是希望能够设计出属于自己的住宅，满足自己的专属生活，因此，这种更为单纯的建造方式并非业主们所期待。

However, despite the popularity of custom-build neighborhoods like Almere, the construction industry is seeing a shift toward design-and-build as a method of realizing homeowners' dreams. These companies create a one-stop shop for construction and concept design, the logic being that some sense of the dream home can be retained on the part of the homeowner, but with the benefit of a seamless construction timeline and reduced economic strain. While the best design-and-build homes still maintain a relationship with the architect, this is not always the case. The architect is seen as an additional extra, and not a necessity.
Kit houses take this approach further, completely distancing the architect from the client with prefabricated designs, that reduce cost and construction time, delivered directly to site. Popularized in the US throughout the 20th century, the modular components of these kit houses still offer a certain sense of design control—similar to the self-build origins of Walter’s Way—but in this case they ultimately restrict the homeowner’s creative autonomy. These businesses have noted how the main anxiety of a self-build project centers around the very core of the concept—the building process itself—and that project managing their own build is not what most self-builders want at Graven Hill.


Image via Flickr user internetarchivebookimages (Public Domain)

那么，建筑师该如何与这些模块化的方式进行抗争呢？建筑师在自建社区中是否能够继续持有一席之地？他们的所作所为是否更能为这个行业所接受？Opinder Liddar是位于牛津的lapd 建筑事务所的主要负责人，在Graven Hill项目的设计建造过程中，他与客户进行密切的合作，同时强调，设计是自建项目的核心。

“我们所合作的客户会来找我们，就是因为他们对设计十分重视。甚至连D+B [design and build]公司都与我们进行过合作。”

So how do architects compete with quicker, cheaper alternatives that bypass the architect? Is there a continued role for the architect within "self-build communities," or will the profession have to adapt what they offer? Opinder Liddar, a director of Oxfordshire-based lapd Architects, is working with self-build clients at Graven Hill and highlights design as the irreplaceable core of any self-build project:
“The clients we work with come to us because they value design. Even D+B [design and build] companies come to us because they value design.”


Courtesy of lapd Architects

建筑师的成长过程需要经过长时间的专业训练，这并非没有理由，同时传统的设计方式会更加满足客户的需求。聪明的自建者都能理解，对于客户来说，如果想要达到预期的目标，那么建筑师这一角色不可或缺，但是也许也能够在专业策略和模块化成本效益之间找到一个平衡点，从而更好地解决建筑设计的专业问题。在接下来的几年，会有更多诸如Graven Hill这样的项目逐步完成，它也将成为此类建筑的先例，从而在未来的住宅设计中，提升建筑师的参与性。

There’s a reason architects train for such an extended period of time, and a reason designs by traditional practices are usually more fulfilling. Smart self-builders understand that there is no replacement for design professionals working with their client to achieve their aspirations, but perhaps a new alliance could be forged between the practicality and cost-effectiveness of modular build solutions and the professionalism of architectural design. In the next few years, as more projects reach completion, Graven Hill will provide an insightful precedent for housing schemes of the future, and could be a case study for a new era of architects having increased involvement in the residential housing sector.