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On Roofs, a review of Yona Friedman's manual

Working Paper · September 2017

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 On “Roofs”
a review of Yona
Friedman’s manuals
politecnico di torino
ma.D. architettura costruzione città
architectural technology 2016-2017
professor andrea bocco
junior perri 226685
Roofs are two practical manuals of ���� edited by Yona
Friedman, together with Eda Schaur, for the CCSK
(communication centre of scientific knowledge for self-reliance)
a body of the UN. The manuals were a proposal to solve the
housing problem for people in very poor condition and who are
generally illiterate. They were originally distributed in the shanti
settlements of the indian metropolis. Instead of being mainly
written and full of technical drawings, the manuals show
different methods for building roofs. The techniques are presented
as a series of simple sketches accompanied by a short text.
In this paper, Friedman’s main ideas will be discussed as well
as similar researches carried on by other architects. The aim is
to figure out the cultural background underlying Roofs, and to
evaluate a possible legacy.
Introduction
Roofs are the collection of different manuals,
designed by Friedman for CCSK (communication
centre of scientific knowledge for self-reliance) a body
of the UN. During the ����s CCSK produced over
one hunded different manuals. Roofs contained twenty-
eight of those manuals. They were intended to inform
inhabitants of slum settlements about techniques of
self construction, and were originally distributed to
different indian communities. Since the poorest part
of the population is generally illiterate, the techniques
presented are shown as a series of simple sketches,
accompanied with short text. Thus making it easy to
understand and reproduce the contents.
Back in 1991, the publication of Roofs was a conclusion
for Yona Friedman’s research of the last decades. The
manuals were strongly linked to his essay L’Architecture
de Survie published in ����, and his project for the
Museum of Simple Technology, opened in Madras in ����.
In L’Architecture de Survie Friedman defined the house
as composed by four elements: foundations, structure,
horizontal slabs and vertical partitions. In a way re-
using Gottfried Semper’s definition of architecture.
But “Roofs are the most important and, technically
speaking, the most complex elements of buildings.
They are an essential part of shelter” (Friedman, ����).
In the introduction of Roofs Friedman defined the
housing problem by indicating three different but ↑1 2↓
complementary approaches: social, environmental and
technical. Housing is seen as a social problem, that
address human rights of autonomy and survival. So
the financial aspects of building as well as maintenance
must be considered in order to make housing
economically sustainable for the owners. But housing
has also an environmental impact that is not restricted
to the covered area of the roof. It also includes its open
spaces, such as private yards and the urban environment
itself. For all these reasons it is important to reduce
the dipendence and use of external resources such as
energy and water. A well designed roof can control the
internal climate of a house, limiting the use of hvac
system, and can also collect rainwater that could be
recycled for living purposes. Construction materials
should be found locally, if possible, and they should
be renewable materials. For example it is possible to
grow the bamboo that is needed for the structure in
the yard, and raw-earth bricks could easily be made by
digging the ground. While building a house both social
and environmental problems converge into technical 1_ Roofs, Museum of Simple Technology, Madras (1987).
/Courtesy Yona Friedman
problems. Low technology is seen as a solution in order
to keep construction affordable. Self-help construction 2_ Yona Friedman, Spatial City project, Perspective, (1958-
1959).
as well as self-help maintenance make the people able /Courtesy MoMA, New York
to build the house by themselves without having to pay
external workers. The variety of techniques presented,
try to cover different geographical areas, in order
to have a broad choice of techniques and materials
due to different climate conditions and availability of
1
 resources.
The manuals were spread in India, Africa and South
America. In a recent interview Friedman said that in
India alone ten million copies were distributed.
The second half of the twentieth century has seen a
strong process of urbanization with no fair distribution
of economic resources. Many architects have focused
their research field on studying the housing conditions
all over the world. Roofs is Friedman’s own proposal
to solve the housing problem in third world countries.
Which has several points in common with the works of
other architects.
A realizable Utopia
Yona Friedman became famous in the architectural
field with his project of the Ville Spatiale. Which is one
of the proposals made by the architecture avantgardes
of the ����s, like Archigram’s Plug-in City and
↑3 4↓ Metabolist’s project for the bay of Tokyo. All these
projects were radical solutions to the rapid growth
of cities, following the second world war. Unlike
Friedman’s proposal, that was directly open to people’s
personal contribution, Archigram’s and Metabolist’s
projects were focused on architectural solutions that
tried to understand what people needed. The Ville
Spatiale consisted in a spaceframe made out of steel, that
serves as an infrastructure in which inhabitants could
freely shape their own space. Rather than being made
by fixed elements such as walls and slabs, architecture
3_ Gottfried Semper, Caraib Hut, from Der Stil vol.2 (1863) became a series of screens and moveable partitions.
Four main processes are involved in building: terracing,
roofing, walling and the hearth. The inhabitants could easily modify the house, as easily
/ as moving pieces of forniture, without any need of
demolition.
4_ Jacob L. Crane, aided-self-help construction with pre-
fabricated wood, Puerto Rico (1949). The concept of the Ville Spatiale was proposed
/Courtesy FAO in different contexts, from Paris Spatial of ����, to a
bridge above the Hudson river in New York in ����,
to his project for the Beaubourg competion in Paris
in ����. But none of them were ever realized. Twenty
2
years after the first drawings of the Ville Spatiale, in
his essay L’Architecture de Survie, Friedman stated that
the world was becoming increasingly poor. After his
experiences in the poor reality of the bidonvilles the
idea of architecture mobile became architecture de survie. He
clearly understood that in the illegal settlements, at the
outskirts of third world megalopolis, the state would
not invest in creating a spatial infrastructure and “there
is no interest in developing non realizable projects”
(Friedman ����). In ���� he prepared a manual called
Comment habiter la Terre presented at Habitat, the first
conference held on human settlements promoted by the
UN. The manual was organized as a series of comic
strips with a short text accompaning it. From then on
he started working with this simple method.
In ����, with the support of the indian prime minister
Indira Gandhi and the University of the United Nations,
Friedman opened the CCSK (communication centre
of scientific knowledge for self-reliance), a body of the
UN, with the aim to develop and distribute manuals for
the survival of the poorest. The themes of the manuals
ranged from finding water for hygienic purposes, to
agricoltural and building techniques. Thus providing
several easy solutions to improve people’s habitat.
In ���� Yona Friedman started working on a
project for a museum of simple technologies, to be
built somewhere in the Tamil Nadu state in India.
Eventually it was built in the outskirts of Madras
in ����. The museum is one of the few projects ever
realized by Friedman. It was intended as “a permanent
exhibition of techniques, traditional or modern,
implementable by disfavoured people in order to
improve their life. The exhibits consist of artefacts used
for or resuting from such tecnhiques, accompanied by
a simple and pragmatic explanation” (Friedman ����).
It was built together by Friedman and some artisans
from nearby communities, without the need of using
technical drawings. The project consisted in a grid
of bamboo domes supported by wooden poles with
concrete foundations. Underneath several domes there
were rooms with walls made out of raw-earth bricks,
while the other domes were just used as canopies. The
building itself tested some of the techniques indicated
by the manuals, for example the use of bamboo grid-
domes supporting a suspended roof made by a bamboo
mat covered with aluminium foils.
Housing by People
The publication of Roofs, as well as the activity of
CCSK, highlight a positive and strong collaboration
between Yona Friedman and UNESCO. The UN
generally has been working on habitat issues ever since
its foundation. Through the years following the second
world war, many architects and urban planners had
joined UN habitat programs. Different policies have
always been practiced in many different parts of the
world, from self-help housing to large scale dwelling
programmes.
One of the first to promote self-help building was
Jacob L. Crane, an engineer from the US. Since the
end of the war Crane had been working in Puerto
Rico, a reality that has more in common with the
southern world even if it’s part of the US. In Puerto
Rico the government had to face the bad housing
conditions, mostly related to limited sanitation systems,
overcrowding and unhealthy interior conditions.
Crane found that the same problems affected almost
the whole tropical zone. In the following decades he
worked for the US government as well as for FAO in
developing self-help housing programmes. Recognizing
the importance of upgrading traditional vernacular
architecture methods.
But unfortunately Crane’s work has been
understimated and ignored by the international
community, and it was John F.C. Turner who brought
all these problematiques to the housing debate. After
he graduated in architecture, in London, he moved
to South America. Where he worked, mostly in Perù,
during the ����s. While in America he travelled between
Perù and the US. For these reason his reasearches were
constantly being published in university journals as well
as books. In the US he met Crane and was certainly
aware about the self-housing programmes carried on by
Crane in Puerto Rico. Turner studied for over ten years
the illegal settlements that were growing around the
major peruvian cities. The peruvian national housing
programme had shown failures, in both quantity and ↑5 6↓
quality. The housing demand was far higher than the
public houses being constructed every year. Public flats
were being built on low cost land, that were usually
far from the city centre and its economical activities.
Eventually the mortgage for these flats were too high
for low income families. For these reasons the new
urban population had started to occupy government-
owned lands and built abusively their own houses. In his
books Freedom to Build and Housing by People, he clearly
proposed that public institutions should encourage
these activities, by giving land permission, building
materials, and know-how at low cost.
From this cultural environment, the UN published
the Manual on Self-help Housing in ����. The manual was
intended for public agencies as well as governments
of so-called developing countries. Self-help housing
programmes were promoted by giving a statistical view
of housing costs related to medium family income.
Self-help housing would get faster results spending less
money compared to the typical contract-based housing
programmes adopted from western countries. 5_ The Complex at Drop City (1967), designed by Steve Baer,
with First Dome (1965) on right.
The manual reported several self-help housing Photograph by Richard Kallweit/Courtesy MCA Denver
programmes, newly realized in differents parts of the
world, that were all realized in different ways. One project 6_ Otto Frei, membrane with three and four high points,
variations (1955).
in Morocco was done by using standardised and low /Courtesy Architekturmuseum der Technischen Universität
cost elements such as bricks and prefabricated concrete München
elements for roofs. The government provided the
materials that were used on the site by self-help workers,
following a standardized project. Another example was
3

7_ Why Not Academy (2015), an incremental project.
Photograph by Liveinslums/Courtesy DIVISARE
4
from the Caribbean. There the government built the
foundations, following a general plan, and after that
every family could freely built their own houses on top.
In a village in Ghana, the government delivered only
the roofs and the inhabitants had to finish their houses.
At the end of the manual a few prototype projects
were presented with plans, elevations and construction
phases.
The manual asked for an active involvement of
institutional boards, whose duty was to plan the
neighboorhoods and to provide basic infrastructures.
The program proposed that public agencies has to be
responsible for the management and the assignment of
public founds. Twenty years later Friedman’s job for
CCSK was less faithful to this bureaucrathical vision,
as he was more interested in developing instruments
for people and local communities. In this sense Roofs
followed a path already suggested by Jacob L. Crane in
����.
Towards a new vernacular
“Self help building has always been the prevailing
principle for rural housing in most of the world, it has
evolved in various forms out of thousands of years
of tradition and trial and error” (Crane ����). In ����
the exhibition Architecture without Architects was held at
MoMA in New York, which was organized by Bernard
Rudofsky, where he presented examples of vernacular
architecture from all over the world. Architects were
urged to look at “the philosophy and know-how of
the anonymous builders present the largest untapped
source of architectural inspiration for industrial man”
(Rudofsky ����).
The “primitive hut” had always fascinated modern
architects, ever since Laugier, but after the MoMA
exhibition, the vernacular was investigated with a
different approach. Paul Oliver, a british architectural
historian, had studied the form of traditional architecture
with attention to the society that had producted it.
He studied different kinds of vernacular architecture
worldwide, from Africa, to the mediterrean area to
northern Europe. The study of traditional buildings
and building technologies assumed an anthropological
interest, not only as an ispiration for architectural style.
His book Shelter & Society of ���� saw the contribution of
different reserchers that discussed several case studies.
Attention was also paid to new vernacular forms of
shelter, such as the barriada of Perù, documented by John
F.C. Turner, as well as illegal settlements in the outskirt
of Athens, Greece. The last case study presented was
named Funk Architecture. It was the community of Drop
City in Colorado, a group of writers, painters, film
makers and musicians. The community was born in a
open field in the Colorado countryside, as a reaction to
the current american culture. There they built several
shelters as housing units and also a theatre. The shelters
were domes, made up by a geodesical wooden frame,
and with light panels or membranes as covering. All the
materials used were garbage collected from the nearby
towns.
Shelter & Society presented projects from traditional
norwegian barns to the hippie community known
as Drop City. Roofs also shows traditional techniques
from vernacular architecture to innovative approach
of construction. Friedman fitted avantgarde from
western cities into indian slums. But the manuals were
not exclusively Friedman’s work, in fact, the activity
of CCSK was done with the help of Eda Schaur. She
started working at the IL of Stuttgart (Institute for
Lightweight Structures) in the ����s. Since ���� she has
also been a visiting professor at Ahmedabad School
of Architecture in India. At IL she worked under
the direction of Otto Frei, whose influence is clearly
visible in Roofs. For example in the use of innovative
lightweight structures.
A strong point of Roofs is that the results of several
researches, carried out in different countries by different
people, are collected and presented in a clear and simple
way to the larger audience.
A house still begins with a roof
A few years after the publication of Roofs, the museum
of Madras was demolished, and its construction
materials were recycled by the local community. Despite
CCSK was been interested in creating other museums
in other places, the Madras experience was one of a
kind. Yona Friedman moved back to Europe, where he
still participates in conferences, workshop and cultural
events. In ���� Habitat III took place in Quito, and by
then the amount of people living in urban contexts
passed the population of the countryside, and it was
estimated that more than �4% of world population lived
in slums with inadequate access to safe water, inadequate
sanitation and infrastructure, poor structural quality of
housing, overcrowding and insecure residential status.
Which is more or less the same conditions pointed out
by Jacob L. Crane in ����.
Today architects working in informal settlements as
well as remote rural areas all over the world, are also
interested in covering the development of facilities
for local communities such as schools, libraries,
playgrounds and community centres. I’ll present briefly
a few selected projects that resemble, in my opinion, the
influence of Roofs.
The first project I chose is Why Not Academy by
Gaetano Berni and Ivan Cosentino. It is a civic centre
realized in three phases from ���� to ���� in Mathare
slum in Nairobi, Kenya. The building structure is made
out of wood, organized in a frame made by doubled
plank pillars that sustain beams for the first floor slab
and trusses for the roof. At the ground floor the spaces
in between the pillars are filled with raw-earth brick
walls, while on the first floor the envelope is made
with wooden planks inside and covered externally by
a bamboo mat. All the materials were found in the
informal settlement around the site, except the cypress
wood and bamboo brought from the Kenya Forestry
Research Institute, a state corporation. The process
of gathering materials is similar to what Friedman
indicated in his manual Making your house: using local
resources as much as possible and government stores
for the most expensive.
The other project that I chose is Toigetation a bath
facility for the village school of Bao Lac, Vietnam,
completed in ����, designed by the vietnamese studio
H&P Architects. The roof consist in a space frame
made with bamboo canes, covered by an ondulated steel
panel. Water is collected from the roof and vegetation
layers placed on each of its four sides, that increases
sunshade and provides food.
Finally, the last project I am presenting is Schooltuin
by Ro&Ad Architecten. It is a school dedicated to
agricoltural purposes, in Roosendal, a small town in
Netherlands, opened in ����. A timber frame structure
that is ��� m long, contains under its simple double ↑8 9↓
sloped roof: classrooms, a greenhouse and a henhouse.
All the spaces are placed in a row, and the only thing
that changes is the external envelope. Self-building was
possible due to the simplicity of the structure. Which
decreased the costs of construction, and created a
shared experience between the school community and
the neighbours. The building shaped as a roof is not
only functional but also strongly evocative at the same
time.
It is nearly impossible to evaluate a direct link
between these projects and the work of Yona Friedman. 8_ Toigetation (2014), Toilet + Washing + Vegetation.
Photograph by Doan Thanh Ha/Courtesy DIVISARE
But these previously shown examples, suggests that
Roofs is still a valid handguide when you have to build in 9_ Schooltuin (2017), view from the yard, from the left:
difficult contexts. warehouse, greenhouse, classrooms, henhouse.
Photograph by Katja Effting/Courtesy DIVISARE
The manuals are in my opinion two fundamental books
for every architect, because they teach us that we don’t
need a high budget or unlimited resources to make fine
architecture and create a more liveable habitat.
5
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para la la gente: Yona Friedman. Actar, Barcelona.

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