Walter Segal -The Tartan Grid

One of the more interesting things about Walter Segals detailing, is the use of a Tartan Grid, thats alined to the size of materials as well as the structural needs of the building.

If you take time to have a look through the Excellent AJ article on Walter Segal, you might want to take time and review his explanation of this grid. It’s not the usual grid you might expect to find on a house or for that mater any other Architectural project I have ever worked on in 45 years, and consist of a smaller tartan grid fitting within a master grid.

Walter segal houses were, or are, made with as little waste as possible, materials used are fitted whole, not cut, hence the tartan grid, which is used to control the main materials and they are intended to fit between the main structure grid.

Lets start with the smaller tartan grid, which is made up of a 600mm wide larger spacing with a 50mm wide space between. The 6000mm wide space being the width of a plaster board. The 50mm space is for the secondary structural stud, which always shows through in Walters designs, a point you might like to re consider in a modern house.

The larger grid would be made up of module of the smaller unit, limited by the span of the floor joist, I like the idea of a three or four material tartan modules to the main structural grid of the main support frame, if I keep both grids with a 50mm small gap, this will allow easy planning of the interior fitting in with the smaller internal walls.

The point of this review of Walters grid is to make you think about how you might approach the same problem given modern materials and structural requirements. I still like the idea of this grid, but would look at a 1200mm wide plasterboard, and a 75mm wide stud to both the secondary and main structure, looking at a 150 x75, with a 200 or 225×75 main structure. This defiantly needs some play time looking at the various permutations and layout possibilities, and how easy each would be to install, given that most of his house types are self build. 

I original posted most of this blog in Jan 2012, 

Walter Segal

If you have followed my blog for the past few years, it will come as no surprise to learn of my fascination with the Architect Walter Segal.

I first came into contact with him and his method of timber frame building as a Tech guy in Dow Construction Products, we got involved with making a new updated version with Styrofoam as the loose core insulation not quilt, at the centre of Alternative Technology mid wales.

The Architect Jon Broom was the designers at the time, he worked with Walter, and although runs his own practice in London, he still has strong ties to the method Walter devised.

The AJ at about the same time printed a booklet attached to the AJ, it looked at the way he viewd materials, the method of layout, and his tartan grid that aided layout design by looking at the material sizes. I still have a copy and if you want a pdf for research, please let me know I send a link to down load it.

Recently I recieved an email from the the AA about an affordable Housinr exhibition featering Walter Segal and his self build houses in the London Borough of Lewisham, some 200 units, I was lucky enough to visit several of them with Jon and just loved the simplisity and easy style living.

You can read about the exhibition at this link to the AA site, I plan to take time to visit myself  Walter’s Way – The Self-Build Revolution until 13 February, Architectural Association School of Architecture, 36 Bedford Square, London

I had a lot of separate article on the old site, I will dig these out of my archive and repost over the coming weeks.