Build your own house - VPRO documentary - 2013
72The construction sector is starting to move again. This time not by project developers, but by citizens who build their own house themselves.
Why would you build your own house?
A private plot, a self-design or a completely self-built house. The phenomenon of 'self-building' is becoming increasingly popular in The Netherlands. And it brings about a turnaround in the sector: there is more collaboration, and more communication with future residents. Building 'on demand' ensures that the monopoly on taste no longer lies with the project developers and large contractor: this way every house gets its own story again.
'Empty lots for sale!'. It has been screaming at you in recent years from billboards, bus stops and even from behind the city bus. In many municipalities self-builders are now working on their own lot. Sometimes it is even the only building activity in town, because new construction is almost silent in these crisis years. Already in 1999 Adri Duivesteijn, former alderman for Construction in The Hague and Almere, pleaded to bring the new buildings closer to the citizen by having one third of the (new) buildings in a self-built form.
Self-construction has many variants. From a self-designed home through private commissioning to complete 'do-it-yourself'. A case in point is self-builder Frank Alsema who designs and builds his own house with what he can come to collect from bankrupted contractors (against a little something).
The home from the catalogs is no longer attractive anyways. Architects have to find their 'customers' themselves and sometimes sit around the big table with construction groups. With the project developer 'the money no longer automatically comes in'. And on the contractor / construction worker side, flexibility and pride in their own craft come back. What a shift from supply-oriented to 'demand-driven' can trigger!
VPRO Backlight discusses this development with involved professionals: the politician (Adri Duivesteijn), the architect (Winy Maas), the planner (Jacqueline Tellinga), the contractor (Jan Kuin) and the project developer (Olaf Vreugdenhil, De Alliantie). But especially of course with self-builders Frank, Badrul and Annie (built a Dubai palace), Peter (built a house without windows), wood builders Serge and Alexandra and many others...
Originally broadcasted by VPRO in 2013.
© VPRO Backlight November 2013
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Credits:
Director: Alexander Oey
Research: William de Bruijn
Production: Marie Schutgens
Editors: Henneke Hagen, Frank Wiering
English, French and Spanish subtitles: Ericsson.
French and Spanish subtitles are co-funded by European Union.