SimPLY Segal

After watching the short BBC documentary on Walter Segal, it is very difficult not to make comparisons to the SimPLY construction system. It seems that Professor Harding must have had a large influence by Walter Segal because the basic elements of the SimPLY construction were listed as some of the main goals set out by the homes on Walter’s way. Using store-bought and local materials, creating pieces that can easily be installed by one or two people, designing a safe construction system that allows people with little to no experience to participate to name a few. This idea of designing a construction system that the end user must participate in to create their environment is very intriguing to me because of my personal experience with SimPLY.

After being asked to participate in the Solar Decathlon in California, I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself involved in. I had never had prior construction experience, so everything was a brand new experience: from the hottest day of the competition when we were drenched in sweat while laying the CMU foundation to the end of the project with all 30 of us piled on top of each inside to hook up electrical, mechanical, and plumbing in the floor, walls, and ceiling. But as hot and difficult as it was to do the work, I could contribute to every aspect of the build – and there was something really empowering about being able to add a part of myself to the construction even though I played no part in the design.

Engineers who design cars and airplanes continually work on the same iteration of the same design over and over to perfect and holistically understand the product as a whole. My worry with the idea of creating a smiliar construction system is that we will begin to be too focused on the construction system and loose the context and, ironically, the end user in design systems. How can we use this type of construction to influence our design in way that it doesn’t have to be the same modular outputs? Is flexibility of the system enough or should each design change the system? How can we, as architects and designers, justify using the same pieces if the outcomes may be the same?

Clearly technology has evolved drastically since the construction of Walter’s way, so how can we start using technology to our advantage, and again, is it enough? Can we design systems that allow the users to feel empowered without losing some of the essence of what it is to be honest architecture that reacts to context and program uniquely? Can we get users to feel empowered in a different way without involving the construction system that Segal would approve of?