Looking for Igokochi--Self-Trained Dreamers Build Their Own Homes

Lin Dailing, a graduate of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Tung-hai University and a former writer for DECO magazine, has over the last few years travelled around Taiwan and made a record of people pursuing their dreams of building their own homes. Since beginning work on what would become her first book, Build Your Own House (published in 2007), she has visited more than 200 people erecting their own dwellings and published three more books, each one selling well and setting off a trend.

The Taipei branch of the Five Dime restaurant chain is built around the theme of a woman who loses herself in dance. It is another creative idea from self-taught architect Hsieh Li-hsiang.

"In fact, everyone knows instinctively how to build a house," says Lin. She especially favors focusing on and interviewing those people whose homes have a natural and hand-made feel, are green and -energy-efficient, and have an experimental spirit, yet are affordable for the average person. And behind every one of these houses, there is a unique and fascinating human-interest story.

Take for example "Su's Lakeside House" in Hualien. The owners, in order to realize their daughter's dream of having a house like that in the film Howl's Moving Castle, laid tracks on the ground and fit six steel wheels (each capable of bearing a one-ton load) on the house, plus an anchor, allowing it to move back and forth on the tracks. It is not only architectural thinking outside the box, but also a gift of love.

What's most remarkable and surprising about these ordinary people's homes with extraordinary character is that on average they cost only NT$2-5 million (about US$65-160,000), far less than the more than NT$10 million a professional architect would ask for a conventional house. For instance, there is a home in Tai-mali, Taidong County, made of old cargo containers, discarded wood, and metal parts completed at a cost of less than NT$30,000 for more than 20 ping (60 square meters) of floor space. Obviously you don't have to have deep pockets to own a home that is close to your heart.

Professor John Ke-chiang Liu of the Graduate Institute of Building and Planning at National Taiwan University has opined, "The history of residences for mankind is a history of people building houses themselves." Changes in architectural trends foreshadow changes in the spirit of an age, so what should we make of the fact that around Taiwan there are more and more people building their own homes?

As long ago as remote prehistoric times, people knew how to use the materials at hand like branches, leaves, grass, and stones to shelter themselves from the elements. In agricultural societies, the definition of "home" is simple: your house is your home, whether a small one for a single family or a large one for a whole clan, with everyone living in close proximity and interdependence. And when family members grow up, with the help of the whole group they establish independent households which become home for them and theirs.

With the arrival of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-19th century, factories attracted large numbers of people to live near them, and there was huge emigration of population out of the countryside, as people left behind their traditional clan lands and entered huge, alien, and fast-paced cities. Thereafter, as architectural technology improved, tightly packed high-rise buildings appeared, and people from different places, sharing only similar earning power, lived together under a single roof, coming and going each day through the same main doors. Family houses or clan compounds, built with one's own hands on one's own lands, were largely replaced by apartment blocks requiring specialized building skills, bought and sold without regard for blood ties or place of birth. This process of "the disappearance of the family home" has been going on for now for nearly 100 years.

However, today we have in many respects begun moving away from the cookie-cutter thinking of the industrial era, and in the post-modern digital age many people are giving increasing weight to creativity, a hand-made feel, healthy and slow lifestyles, environmental protection, and spirituality. Whether in terms of jobs or individual orientations, we are developing centrifugally, and many people are no longer willing to be tied down to a routine lifestyle or live like everyone else behind uniform concrete walls.

Consequently, more and more people aspire to have a house that is individualized, where they can express their personalities and creativity, recapture the lost warmth of the extended families of yesteryear, form a new community of people with shared ideals, or reconnect with nature, giving their residence multiple functions and reclaiming its meaning as "home."

Through hands-on labor, amateur home-builders become deeply attached to their living spaces and the land, and gain a sense of achievement and groundedness. The photo shows Huang Peng-chi working on his house in Linkou.

Look for instance at the "House in Memory of Grandmother" in Jiadong, Pingtung. Having lived in the home for three generations, or more than 90 years, the residents faced the problem of being unable to accommodate all of the nearly 30 family members who would come home for Chinese New Year. Therefore an uncle and nephew created a new space next to the original house, figuring out what to do as they went along. The new house, laid out in an L-shape in order to preserve an old mango tree with meaningful memories for the clan, has become a new focal point for family members to communicate with and relate to each other.

For those who create one, the self-made "home" is a manifestation of the world inside their heads. For example, "Ah-pao" (Lee Pao-lien), who published the book A Female Farmer's Notes on Life in the Mountains in 2004, though already single-handedly running a big fruit orchard in Lishan, insisted on building her own house. Despite lacking any experience with architecture or construction, she did everything-making sketches, buying the building materials, and building the house-without any outside help whatsoever. Her reason was the same as that recorded by Henry David Thoreau 150 years ago in the book Walden: Building a house is the most entertaining game in all of life, so how could you take the risk of letting anyone else ruin it!

Another woman in this same school is Hsieh Li-hsiang, known as "the female Gaudi of Taiwan." After rolling back home without a penny to her name at age 27, she built a small brick dwelling with her own hands on a piece of ancestral property. This lit a fire in her, and she began putting up walls of all colors and materials, including burned brick, driftwood, and stone slab, with admixtures of porcelain, glass beads, and flora. The more she built, the more dream-like, resplendent, and magical her house became. In order to be able to keep building, she has half-reluctantly opened four "Five Dime" restaurants, which have become tourist attractions in their own right.

Another major trend in DIY home-building is to reconnect the residents with nature. This may also be considered a collective "field of dreams" for baby-boomers hitting retirement age.

The Japanese architectural legend Ito Toyo has said: "Buildings in the 20th century existed to serve a single function-they were machines to escape from nature. But in the 21st century, there will have to be continuity between people, buildings and nature, not only in terms of energy savings but also harmonization with the environment and society."

In fact, architecture is just the crystallization of the wisdom accumulated over time by our ancestors in their interactions with nature. The form that architecture takes is often inseparable from the environment, climate, topography, and social networks of the given locale.

For example, in frosty northern Europe, the houses have inclined roofs to keep heavy snow from accumulating. In Southeast Asia, with lots of rain and insects, you will find houses raised on stilts. On Orchid Island, with strong ocean winds, houses are built halfway below ground, keeping them warm in winter and cool in summer. And in Fujian you will find the unique donut-shaped tulou, fortified on the outside and hollow inside, built to resist pirate raiders.

As returning to nature and environmental friendliness have become new indicators of quality of life, there has been a worldwide trend toward "green architecture" that emphasizes conservation, energy savings, waste reduction, and health. And one of the major sub-trends within this larger movement is the use of natural materials (stone, earth, wood, bamboo).

Take for example the packed-earth house in Taitung christened "Ah Niu Cun." The main material for the walls is earth dug up when the foundation was put in. To the earth was added water, sand, and rice stalks, then the mixture was rolled by hand into balls, which were packed tightly to form the walls.

Lin Ya-yin, the guiding hand in the design of Ah Niu Cun, is currently the only architect in Taiwan specializing in the field of natural architecture. She explains that this field originated in the US back in the 1950s. It was one link in the "back to the land" part of the hippie movement, a reaction against the rush for industrial development, given further impetus by the energy crises that later followed.

However, as Lin emphasizes, "Natural architecture is for people who already have the seed planted in their minds." The core spirit is not in the building itself, but in the question of how people can get back to nature, and through everyday toil build up a relationship of closeness with the soil and air, and from that get a sense of satisfaction and groundedness. It is choosing a simple life built mainly around physical labor.

Whatever the motive, after all the work of finding a piece of land, designing the house, and building it (or having it built), there is still many a slip 'twixt cup and lip: not everything ends up going smoothly.

Lin Dailing says that virtually everyone she interviewed had some hard times to report. Problems ranged from lazy workmen, dishonest contractors who absconded with funds, and materials being stolen, to sudden sharp rises in the price of steel rebars-unforeseen accidents can happen at any point. Thus amateur homebuilders, besides having brains filled with fantasies, also have to learn how to select and buy building materials, contract out jobs, supervise workmen, and do follow-up maintenance. And even then you may still find yourself friendless in some remote place, or even up against demonic neighbors, not to mention figuring out how to protect yourself against burglars. Therefore she advises that people who want to turn their dreams into reality have to assess carefully their own determination and capabilities, and not act rashly.

And once the dream is realized, what does it feel like to live in a modern-day "peach-blossom paradise" (to borrow the name of the idealized land of the ancient poet Tao Yuanming)? In 2002, Shih Chi-ching retired from teaching and feminist activism, and moved to the mountains of Miaoli. In a book of her experiences, she wrote that it is not so easy to be a "modern Tao Yuanming"! For instance, she feels exasperated when she looks out at the rampant weeds overrunning her 3000 azalea plants on her nearly 4000 ping of land. Though she busts her behind pulling weeds, they refuse to die. Yet she still loves her mountain lifestyle, "falling asleep amidst the croaking of frogs, waking up with the singing of birds."

For those who dream of building their own homes, whatever stage you may be at, ultimately you have to return to the fundamental question: "What is it that you see in your imagination as home?" In the end, only if you know your own heart well can you create your own igokochi!