Introduction on incremental self-built housing.
The global practice of self-build housing is the result of poverty and exclusion. For a long time, the slums were seen as a problem, which led to the eviction of households that had settled illegally on vacant lots and on the outskirts of the city. The architect John Turner, who worked in the slums of Lima in Peru, had discovered ealy on that self-builders are of great value in public housing, even if their homes were often initially primitive. Such conditions were also found in other countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Gradually, the understanding emerged that the self-builders were part of the solution and government policies were changed to tolerating and then facilitating self-builders. Self-construction and the policy views on it, have changed radically in just a few decades. In many countries, poverty has decreased somewhat and new opportunities for social housing emerged. Over the last 50 years, the self-build practice has evolved into hybrid public housing with organized self-construction and social rental and owner-occupied housing.
2025 Documents by Jan Bredenoord:
1 About self-help incremental housing, related items and definitions
Download: About self-help incremental housing. JBR Website 2025
2 Self-constructed housing in transition
Download: Self-construction in transition. JBR Website 2025
3 Self-build housing: looking back an looking ahead
Download: Self-build homes looking back and looking ahead. JBR Website 2025
The work of John Turner, Jorge Burga Barta, Charles Correa, Balkrishna Doshi, and others.
John Turner
John Turner is a British architect who has written extensively on housing and community organisation. He investigated the squatter settlements in Peru from 1957-1965. There, Turner studied and advised on a number of reconstruction and slum upgrading programmes which were part of a nation-wide community development initiative. During this time Peru was also a leading centre for debate on housing policy, community development and the role of self-help housing. Turner’s own theoretical stance was formed in this context and combined aspects of the work of the Peruvian urban theorists Fernando Belaúnde, Pedro Beltrán and Carlos Delgado.
Turner’s central thesis argued that housing is best provided and managed by those who are to dwell in it rather than being centrally administered by the state. In the self-building and self-management of housing and neighbourhoods, Turner asserted that the global North had much to learn from the rapidly developing cities of the global South. Through a number of empirical studies, some of which were published in a collection for Habitat International Coalition entitled Building Community, he showed clearly that neighbourhoods designed with local groups worked better since people were experts on their own situations and should be given the ‘freedom to build’, a phrase that became the title for an edited collection by Tuner. Whether this freedom was granted by the state or wrested from it through squatting was less important. Within this framework the state as well as private professionals such as architects and engineers, act as enablers, resulting in a shift in thinking that valorises experience and local know-how over technocratic and professionalised forms of knowledge. In contrast to the ‘aided self-help’ policies of the World Bank, for which Turner is frequently credited, his vision was far more radical as he not only contended that residents should build their own houses and neighbourhoods, but that they should also have control over their finances and management. In Freedom to Build: Dweller Control of the Housing Process, which was first published in 1972, Turner sets out these views, which remain relevant today.
Jorge Burga Bartra
Jorge Burga Bartra (1941-2024) was a well-known Peruvian architect, who tried to improve the quality of self-built housing in the new suburbs of Peruvian cities, which boomed in the second half of the 21st century. The quality of housing in the young self-built suburbs of Lima was a challenge, as many landowners did not have the knowledge or resources to build their homes properly. Along the Pacific coast, homeowners have to reckon with earthquakes, which is why self-build homes also need to be reinforced. This was often not done by the self-builders, due to a lack of sufficient resources of their own. The architectural quality of self-built houses in Lima is generally not high, the appearance of the facades is usually poor, and the use of colors is limited. Architect Burga argued that professionals should be involved in the design of self-built houses, which happened only sporadically. Burga designed model houses to improve the architecture of street houses. He suggested building exterior stairs to create separate entrances for the apartments on the higher floors. Years ago, Burga already designed models for the densification of residential blocks in the suburbs by means of elevated residential streets. However, this required a collective approach and the cooperation of individual owners. Burga designed floor plans and facades of the houses in a generation-proof way, for the benefit of public housing in Lima. Another aspect of his career involves the distinctive architecture of homes and buildings in rural areas and villages in Peru.
Charles Correa
Charles Correa (1931-2015) was a famous architect from India. He defined modern architecture in the country, moving on from the designs that Le Corbusier made in the new city of Chandigarh and in Ahmedabad in the early years after India’s independence. Correa acted as a President of the Indian National Commission on Urbanisation and was a pioneer in the field of affordable housing, and he constantly called attention to the crucial link between affordable housing, public transport and work areas. At the beginning of the 1960s he and two colleagues were advocates of this concept and they came up with a proposal for a radical restructuring of Mumbai (then called Bombay), where the growing number of illegal settlements in the city would be addressed. The then foreseen new town was designed to accommodate 2 million people and is now known as Navi Mumbai (New Bombay). By developing land on the other side of Bombay’s port, he would convert the North-South-development development axis of Mumbai into a poly centric urbanization model around the Bay. Navi Mumbai is a large-scale new town and one of the largest in the twentieth century. It is also the location of a smaller-scale experiment: the Belapur Incremental Housing project. As an architect Correa designed only one residential tower in his own city Mumbai, but this has become an iconic building, showing his Indian approach to architecture, using local building forms based on Indian living cultures.
Initially, Correa applied his ideas on housing and living to low, single houses, to incremental housing and to high-rise living. The ‘tube house’ in Ahmedabad (1962) is an early model of sustainable design for down-to-earth housing. It is a prototype of low-income housing, having a natural ventilation system and large living spaces; it was affordable as well as climate friendly. Only one tube house was built which finally was demolished in 1995. Nevertheless, the design is seen as iconic influencing the later work of Correa in the 1960 and 1970s, such as with the GHB-2 housing project (of the Gurajat Housing Board) in Ahmedabad, and designs for the PREVI (Experimental Housing Project) affordable housing project in Lima, Peru, where he showed the advantages of low-rise, high-density housing, with a cluster of incremental row-houses, with fluctuating widths, open-to-sky spaces and central double-height spaces covered by ‘wind-scoops’ for ventilation. Charles Correa’s work on housing has led to another iconic project, namely the Belapur Incremental Housing project realised in 1983 in Navi Mumbai. The project reveals the possibilities of the high-density, low-rise principle, based on a courtyard unit shared by a group of seven incremental houses. The project grew into a fully-fledged housing project to accommodate 600 households. The houses of the Belapur Housing are of one or two storeys, and were built traditionally, which fits well with the household’s life styles. The features are: high-density, incremental growth, small communities.
Balkrishna Doshi
The architect Balkrisna Doshi (1927) is another Indian architect who is dedicated to the social housing questions in India. He received the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2018. The jury stated that “with an understanding and appreciation of the deep traditions of India’s architecture, Doshi united prefabrication and local craft and developed a vocabulary in harmony with the history, culture, local traditions and the changing times of his home country India”. During many decades Doshi created an extensive collection of educational, cultural, public administration buildings and residential projects.
Balkrishna Doshi designed the Aranya Low Cost Housing project that was realized in 1989 in Indore. The complex accommodates over 80,000 residents through a system of low cost housing with courtyards and internal pathways. The community is comprised of over 6,500 residences, amongst six sectors – each of which features a range of housing options, from modest one-room units to spacious houses, to accommodate a range of incomes. The homes were designed with extension and adaptability in mind. It won the Aga Khan award for architecture in 1995, and was praised for its integration of mixed-income groups. Balkrishna Doshi about the Aranya Low-Cost housing project: “They are not houses but homes where a happy community lives. That is what finally matters.” Furthermore he says: “It seems I should take an oath and remember it for my lifetime: to provide the lowest class with the proper dwelling.”
Alejandro Aravena
A new generation of architects is demonstrating the ability to connect social responsibility, economic demands, design of human habitat and the city. With his group ‘Elemental’ the Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena – is the recipient of the 2016 Pritzker Architecture Prize. He and his team have been changing several design aspects of social housing, and also public policy concerning housing. What really sets Aravena apart is his commitment to social housing. Since 2000, he and his collaborators have consistently realized works with clear social goals. Calling the company a “Do Tank,” as opposed to a think tank, they have built more than 2,500 units using imaginative, flexible and direct architectural solutions for low cost social housing. The ELEMENTAL team participates in every phase of the complex process of providing dwellings for the underserved: engaging with politicians, lawyers, researchers, residents, local authorities, and builders, in order to obtain the best possible results for the benefit of the residents and society. An understanding of the importance of the aspirations of the inhabitants and their active participation and investment in a project, as well as good design, have contributed to the creation of new opportunities for those from underprivileged backgrounds. Below: images of incremental growth in ELEMENTAL’s structures:
SPARC with and Prasanna Desai.
The architect Prasanna Desai has done research (with Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers) to develop an Incremental Housing Strategy that could be implemented anywhere. A team of international architects, urban planners, landscape architects and graphic designers volunteered to set up the strategy which uses the existing urban formations as starting point for development. Organic patterns that have evolved during time are preserved and existing social networks are respected. Neighbours remain neighbours, local remains local. When the architects started working the Indian government would initiate a grant of 4500 euro per family for making their homes incremental – at a national scale. The grant is now active and it can be given to any family who lives in a kaccha – an old temporary structure, not suitable for living. It is called City In-Situ Rehabilitation Scheme for Urban Poor Staying in Slums in City of Pune Under BSUP (Basic Services to the Urban Poor), and JNNURM (Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission). The strategy strengthens the informal and aims to accelerate the legalization of the homes of the urban poor. Their strategy was arranged to fit the parameters of this grant. This study was done with SPARC and Mahila Milan (Women Together).
About SPARC: the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers is one of the largest Indian NGOs working on housing and infrastructure issues for the urban poor. In 1984, when SPARC was formed, it began working with the most vulnerable and invisible of Mumbai’s urban poor – the pavement dwellers. SPARC’s philosophy is that if they can develop solutions that work for the poorest and most marginalized in the city, then these solutions can be scaled up to work for other groups of the urban poor across the country and internationally.
Since 1986, SPARC has been working in partnership with two community-based organizations the National Slum Dwellers Federation and Mahila Milan. Together, they are known as the Alliance. Today, the Alliance works in about 70 cities in the country and has networks in about 25 countries internationally. The Pune Municipal Corporation followed a participatory approach to implement an in-situ slum upgradation project under BSUP scheme of JNNURM to provide an alternative housing solution in high density slum areas of Yerwada region.
Patricio Samper Gnekko, Ciudad Bachué
In Bogotá, Colombia, Ciudad Bachué is a high-density pilot project for social housing, that was built between 1978 and 1982. The project featured single and multi-family progressively expanded units, in total 7,124. Initially, the urban housing area Ciudad Bachué was located at the periphery of the Bogotá city centre, and later became well-connected to the city by various public transit lines. Meanwhile, the area is fully part of Bogotá’s urban fabric to the North. The project combines ten different housing types all less than 100 m2: five types are single family, five are multi-family, ranging from 1 to 5 story. All housing types were intended to be expanded progressively, except for the 4 and 5-story buildings with duplex apartments on top. Ciudad Bachué is a successful urban housing settlement, in terms of the experienced housing growth, and the evolution of community facilities and services of the settlement. Households of single-family and multi-family dwellings developed their homes within a built structure, which gave them the possibility to finish and refurbish their homes. One result of the incremental housing development is a sense of belonging, and a form of community development. The building blocks are small but incredibly dense and are mostly pedestrianised; only a few streets are wide enough to accommodate cars. The buildings are long and narrow with boxy additions stacked on top of the other onto the original structure.