Self-built housing + AE House

摘要

In this issue, we celebrate the homes architects can build with close collaborations and comprehensive control. The six extraordinary houses featured in this year's AR House awards - from Australia, Mexico, Japan, Belgium and the ITS - shape spaces with specificity and intimate grain. We also look to other dwellings, built by their inhabitants, that have sprung up, escaped or been excluded from formal systems of settled space, and question the intentions of the architect who inserts themself into the process: how much space do they take, what right do they claim to do so? Fifteen years on, we reassess the 'half-houses' of Elemental in the Quinta Monroy to untangle the agency of architect and inhabitant. Evolving construction protocols and housing typologies in Cairo open up the blurred realm of the 'semi-formal', while the self-made urbanity of East African refugee camps reveals longevity and permanence - in contrast to common misconceptions of transience. We also turn our attention to the precarity of self-built neighbourhoods and marginalised communities in California, Lisbon, Amsterdam and Seoul.