Peter Hübner - Building as a Social Process. Peter Hübner, Building as a Social Process

Peter Hübner began his career as an orthopaedic shoemaker andmoved on to cabinetmaking before studying architecture. In the1960s he became a successful designer of prefabricated buildingsand sanitary units. This expertise gained him a chair in buildingconstruction at Stuttgart University where, in collaboration with fellowprofessor Peter Sulzer, he undertook a series of experimentsthat changed the course of his architecture. It began with an elaborationof the Walter Segal building method, but culminated in astudent hostel designed, built and lived-in by architectural studentsat Stuttgart University's Vaihingen campus. Using student labourand superfluous or recycled materials it was very cheap, but it alsoreflected the capabilities and aspirations of its owners in a surprisingand potent way, imbuing them with confidence. Hübner wasstruck by the importance of building as a social process, and understoodthat the mechanised construction he had earlier been involvedin had largely taken the soul out of it.As word about the Vaihingen project got about, Hübner receivedrequests for more cheap self-help buildings, and discovered a newprofessional role as facilitator and ringmaster. Unable to predicthow these improvised buildings would turn out, he yielded up theaesthetic control of the designer-despot in favour of experiencingthe pleasure of human relationships as a project unfolds. Most newbuildings are received by their users with comparative indifference,but the self-help projects engender passionate commitment, andit continues long after they are finished. People identify with thespaces they helped to determine, and naturally appropriate them.As a producer of such anarchic work, it is perhaps surprising todiscover that Hübner has also long been at the forefront of CAD,but this is a natural development of systematisation, for if computerscan calculate all the variants and irregularities, we need nolonger conform to Ford's production line. Hübner uses