Z E M C H 2 0 1 2 I n t e r n a t i o n a l C o n f e r e n c e
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Out of dept out of danger, is a wise saying, but not everybody have had a chance of
getting there while an escalating price spiral have brought the housing market to new,
higher cost levels. Many have struggled at finding economical accommodation. Their
payment ability have perhaps been stretched too far, for too long, with the blessing of the
bank. This kind of development is not a new phenomenon. The situations described
occur from time to time.
At a time when high housing costs are inhibiting many people to enter the housing
market through ownership, prices also keep rising through new legislation being
introduced. Energy efficiency measures and the phasing in of renewable energy are
such examples. In Europe the new energy efficiency directives (EU 2010) and the push
towards Net Zero Energy Buildings will drive up building costs by 5 to 10 percent for
homebuyers (IEA 2008). The long-term consequence, though, is positive in that it
ensures extremely low energy running costs.
A North European case from 1948.
After the Second World War 1940-1945 the need for building affordable homes was
imminent in war struck European countries. Yet there was a tendency to carry on
building with the same techniques as earlier. They were time consuming and costly and
did not respond to the new needs arising from rebuilding a partly bombed out housing
stock in many countries. In some ways this is a similar situation to the challenges facing
families that today cannot afford their accommodation as a result of financial turmoil in
many countries.
One example of emerging innovation after 1945 appeared in Norway where the low cost
housing of the entrepreneur Olav Selvaag created fierce debate (SELVAAG 2012). He
had, even before the war, claimed that he could build three times as many houses with
the available workforce and money as the government expected. His concern was
founded on a national economic attitude. He reasoned that the country could simply not
afford to build as expensive housing as before. If it did, it would be impossible to house
everybody. The housing need could not be covered. Instead he argued for a change of
policy whereby more and cheaper dwellings were built (HASSELKNIPPE 1982: 10). This
approach was very much like the approach of several of the Year of the Shelter for the
Homeless competition entries that emerged in 1987, almost half a century later. The only
condition that Selvaag set was that they could relax the building regulations by allowing
him to be building slimmer constructions using 3” (75mm) American timber frame
construction. “Wasting materials the way the building regulations force us to do, should
be a punishable offence”, he argued (HASSELKNIPPE 1982: 13). He questioned the
very logic of several parts of the building regulations.
After a long and fierce debate where the dominating and conservative architectural and
engineering establishment went against him, they challenged him to prove his case
through documentation and calculations. He did offer the documentation for the perusal
of the establishment.
One of his fiercest critics was Professor Holmgren from NTH, now the technical
University NTNU in Trondheim. He was engaged by the building authorities to evaluate
the proposed construction Selvaag had designed. He concluded that the calculations
were misleading, that in reality the performance of the house from an insulation point of
view would not be as designed. Selvaag felt this was an under the belt attack since he
had documented that the house would have twice the insulation level prescribed by the
building regulations at the time (HASSELKNIPPE 1982: 33-34).
