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Hugo Priemus — about mixed urban housing strategy

01 August 2016

Hugo Priemusis perhaps the most renowned expert on social housing in the world. Professor of Delft University of Technology, he investigates the problems of housing policy, spatial planning, land legislation, etc. We met with Hugo Priemus at the Moscow urban forum and talked about the global trends in the field of mass housing construction.

— Mass industrial housing being criticized a lot, and at the same time in Russia it continues, even as we see in the modernization program for the Moscow series, adapts to the market. What do you think about the prospects and demand of the technology and its product?

— Tomorrow in the evening I hope to give a lecture in the Strelka Institute, I will also deal with this issue. The mass housing started in particular in the 60s after World War II, when there were mass shortages and when governments, I guess also in Russia, but certainly in Western Europe tried to promote labour-saving building systems. And that was by definition mass housing, and it is not only without architects but its more serious, it’s without occupants, without people, and that’s a real problem.

When we look at the differentiation, which could be logical, and then you look at the flexibility and changing, as the most important factor is changes with occupants: a child may be born, there may be an increase in income, there are reasons which may cause a different preference in housing; and that is not a case in mass housing, not only in Russia, but in many parts of the world.

Amsterdam, Bijlmer. 1970s

And different people, already in the 70s, and I am one of them, and certainly I am not the only one who argue that it would be worthwhile to make a separation between the support and infill. The support is the part of the building which really supports the construction, which is related to land, which is related to location. The support cannot easily be industrialised, you have to do it on the spot. It is a sort of circus in the past, and it will remain the circus, but not for the whole housing estate, only for the support.

— What do you mean by “support” and “infill”?

One of the priorities could be to make the support as neutral as possible, so that later on when there are economic changes, or there are technological changes, you can change the dwelling with the same support.

The second part of the theme is infill. Infill is a part of the construction that you can easily remove or you can change it. It could be that it’s not only a matter of differentiation within construction, but it also would be a differentiation in finance. Support will have a longer life time than the infill; there may even be a difference in ownership that the support is the property of, let’s say, a housing association or so on, and the infill is the ownership of occupants. The infill is not so much a product of the construction industry — it’s a product of industry in general. It can be prefabricated, it can be made on the different location than the housing estate, and the support will always be tied to the land; you can pre-fabricate on other place, but that’s very expensive and complicated. And step by step you see this also in practice, not only for new dwellings, but also in restructuring existing dwellings.

Panel Housing, Hungary. 1970s

— If you recall, at the dawn of the industrial construction of the house was assembled from ready living cells in which to change anything was hard...

— A very interesting tendency that I observe now in Western European countries — you could relate it to IKEA, the Swedish firm. That’s a development from infill as part of the construction to furniture. It’s no longer a part of the building and the dwelling, but it’s a part of the furniture.

In the thirties in the Netherlands, when the bed boxes were forbidden for health reasons, there were a number of housing associations who said, ‘A bed is a part of a house, so we rent out not only the house but including the beds.’ And now we think that a bed is something which you can buy as an occupant and there is no need to ask for it while contracting. Cupboards were mostly a part of the dwelling part of the construction infill, but more and more we see that it is now a piece of furniture which you do not buy from the contractor but in all kinds of shops and so on.

What is now going on, I think also in Russia but, I do not know enough about Russia, is that the components of kitchens and the components of bathrooms are also moving from the construction to furniture and responsibility of the occupants; and I think that is a very interesting tendency. The less support you build the more neutral it is, and more room there is for the occupants, the more flexibility you have. You don’t know what will happen in the future but if the support is neutral than you can by changing infill, that is more consistent by changing the furniture, you can adopt to the new circumstances and that’s what I have in mind.

If you look at the existing building systems, the traditional prefabricated systems which were built in many places in Russia, but also in other places, they did not survive, and they are too robust, you cannot change them or that is very expensive. But the systems where you pour the concrete on the place and then later on you add the infill and all the furniture, I think, that must be the future; and that means that building contractors are wise not to build every component of the house but in particular the support and they try to relate it to furniture and infill. And it is also about modular coordination, and you need modular coordination to create the synergy between the infill. Hopefully that’s an answer to your question!

— So you think that all buildings should consist of prefabricated structures and furniture, including. Do you think it will not destroy the identity or is a natural process, and what is the next step?

— The person who wrote about this already in the sixties first in Dutch than in English is John Habraken. If you Google his name you will find the approach of support and infill. He agrees that there is no reason to standardize whole housing estates or housing units but only to standardize components which you can combine in very different forms. A brick is mostly standardized but with bricks you can make different things.

When I talk about prefabrication I must be perhaps a little bit more clear. It has the opportunity for prefabrication, but when I have two light hands (I don’t have them) and I have time than I could make the infill myself as occupant and perhaps in a traditional way as long as I can remove it later on if I want. The ideal system in my opinion is that it doesn’t change when the building technology change. For instance, we are now all talking about 3D printing, I don’t know whether it will be the future, it could be; these approaches could also be implemented when 3D is developing. So, it must not give a definition; this system can work if only you make constructions in this way, that may change, but I think the idea of the separation between the support and infill is the basic point.

Panel housing, Moscow

Panel housing, Chile

— So, you think that the technology itself isn’t outdated, so it has the future. Why, then, European countries abandoned mass panel housing?

— For at least two reasons. It was too expensive, so as long as national governments supported it with some subsidies clear but very often a little bit hidden, then it could compete; but when there was no support then they have problems and the conditions were too strict. It could only work if you had projects of thousands dwellings in one stroke, and when you move to a smaller scale, that was difficult.

And the most final factor is the preferences of the people. The people mostly are not very enthusiastic about the uniformity; once somebody said in the mass session that it’s sometimes difficult, impossible to find your own home. That is not what people want.

There is another factor, I don’t know whether it applies to Russia, the Netherlands is a country with a high-density, and you would think there must be a high share of multi-family houses. The building systems in the sixties and early seventies were mostly specialised in high-rises, but when there came more power for the people we see a tendency more to one-family dwellings. And still the new housing programs we see at the moment that about 80% is low-rise that in the whole housing it is 70%. So apparently it is also related to how you are going to build high-rise. It seems so logic, but it’s not always the case or is it so possible to make one-family houses with a garden. It may look traditional but it is very-very popular for people. Here demographics factor should stay also. If there are many families with children, then the one-family cannot be built; but you see in Europe and I guess also in Russia a growing number of people living alone, then a lot of family dwellings is a little bit illogical.

Amsterdam, Scheepstimmermanstraat district. Master plan by West 8

— Due to the fact that today Europe is facing some global problems such as immigration, possibly the construction of panel houses it would be appropriate to use to solve the problem of housing for immigrants?

— Well, immigrants are a part of the housing amount like students migrating from the rural areas to the cities and the only thing is what they can afford, that is a problem for students and certainly also for immigrants, and what their preferences are, how dynamic they are and the number of those immigrants. At the moment the Mayor of Rotterdam was born in Morocco and he made an unbelievable career.

And mostly the relevance would be do not separate them in different parts of the city, but try to mix them, not make new barriers for integration. And in particular also for immigrants the issue of how to make housing more flexible is very important. Because you see that, for instance, in the 70s we had an immigration of Moroccans and Turkish, they changed their preferences very quickly. Their families are much smaller now, so in particular for them there are good reasons also to adopt the separation between the support and infill.

There are fights and complications, for instance, when you separate it — it’s a matter of difference in contract use and different lifetime, and sometimes the existing regulation may be varying, but the idea is good.

And about the point you mentioned — the traditional building techniques. Were you also in the opening session today?

— Yes.

— And then you have seen that most architects had very nice pictures. But they started from sketches that presented new cities, new quarters. And the real challenge now, and also for architects, is that there are already many housing estates, there are too many offices, there is quite an increasing vacancy of offices, and also of shops, so the basic challenge is how to transform those existing dwellings within energy achievement which is mostly not very good and perhaps transform offices and housing, and then you will have to deal with those old erection techniques.

The new techniques can be found primarily in infill, and the supports are not so very spectacular, but when you look at it there is another point: they are extremely cheap. If you calculate the price per kilogram, there are no products in the world which are so cheap. When you make other materials, metals, components, it may look very nice but it is in many cases more expensive than the traditional approach.


Images: failedarchitecture.com, Hatje Cantz and others


 

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