Segal houses, Walters Way

A quiet triumph of self-build housing and adaptive design, tucked away in a South London cul-de-sac

The approach to Walters Way (note no apostrophe) is entirely unremarkable: a typical London pattern of railway-led development, fronds of semi-detached and terraces arching and arcing away from Honor Oak Park Underground station, up the hill towards St. Augustine’s.

Yet when you reach Walters Way, a few minutes walk up the road, you’ll find a cluster of quite remarkable, or perhaps quietly remarkable, houses. Thirteen boxy, half-timbered houses, built to the Segal Method system designed by the architect Walter Segal—hence the ‘Walter’ in Walters Way—as part of a pioneering 1980s self-build housing project led by London Borough of Lewisham. There are around 200 Segal buildings in the UK, but as far as I know, this is perhaps the most best concentrated example of Segal designs in the country.

They are lightweight, simple, cheap buildings made mostly of timber, removing the need for bricklaying and plastering, and thus enable a form of true user-centred design; in that the inhabitants were able to build them for…