Walter Segal Foundations

Building the Walter Segal Way, takes you into a minimal foundation design. Its simplicity itself, yet works as well as a strip foundation, and the steeper sites lap up the method.

So whats involved, simply a paving flag sitting on the earth, with perhaps a small circular concrete pile below, the paving flag following the contour of the natural land.

The load from the timber structure loading direct onto the paving flag at its centre.

The AJ Article has this in depth, which I will send or give a link out for, if for research,  and the films particularly the Grand Design film explains this in a little more detail.

The impact on the land from the house is minimal.

The video below bottom helps to understand it all, its not great and uses concrete posts rather than paving flags, but you get the basic principal, but I downloaded a sketchup file of a very good 3D Sketchup model part finished, and made the video immediately below.and the jpg to the left, I think it shows the construction better.

Walter Segal - Grand Designs

Grand Designs produced this program in 2014, its an up to date view of construction the Walter Segal Way, the construction, but more the people involved, and the problems.
But excellent all the sane.

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.