Are ‘self-build’ high-rises coming to a city near you?

CNN — As urban populations boom, homelessness is rising in some of the world’s richest cities and, across the developing world, nearly one billion people live in sprawling slums. “It’s already happening in my country,” said Arif Hasan, 76, one of Pakistan’s best-known architects, who has worked in the slums of Karachi for over 40 years. “Materials are shipped up in a lift in the middle, and builders or individuals start building out those plots and it creates a tapestry of different housing styles and expressions.” Something & Son’s goal is not to produce one single architectural design, but to outline a working model for a whole new system. “Some people might take these plots and park a caravan up there in the first year.” Something & Son's visualization of individual homes being built into a high-rise skeleton © Andy Merritt/Something & Son This might sound daring but Something & Son look back on progressive precursors for inspiration, including the Four Per Cent Industrial Dwellings Company, whose crest can still be seen on the side of London apartment buildings. “How do you create a bridge between different groups of the population, leaving no one behind, and creating a sort of ‘co-design’ for a 60-hectare area, connecting to landscape features… and creating a new industry in the middle of the city?” U--TT built a cable car to connect steep hillside slums to the city, which Klumpner called an an "elevator" for a housing block "the size of a mountain" Urban-Think Tank/Daniel Schwartz In planning for the future, we can design healthy, safe neighbourhoods that also open up space for the ingenuity of radical self-builders, Klumpner said.