John Turner, the Geddesian Architect

Abstract

John Turner (1927) upholds a creative, open view of self-built housing. Houses are made by users over long periods of time, in an open, on-going process where the inhabitants creatively model their houses. Turner’s experience in developing countries, such as Peru, has usually been considered a pioneer in terms of aided self-help. Actually, the use of self-help in officially developed operations was not a completely new concept, as we have often been led to believe. In this text the figure of Geddes is put forward as not only being essential to drive Turner to on-going, self-help housing. It was also crucial to position his philosophy of housing and the concept of relationships between space and society.