“Housing as a verb” was the motto that the British architect and theorist John Francis Charlewood Turner always carried with him: housing as an action, as a process. That is how he understood it from the time, after finishing his studies, that he went to work in Peru. There he was much struck by the slums that grew and spread around the cities, a phenomenon he believed called for serious study, not censure. Influenced by Patrick Geddes, Lewis Mumford, and some doses of anarchism, his writings on informal self-build were less about the ingenious harnessing of resources to construct homes than about self-help systems and the community ties that result from them. From the years of countercultural fervor all the way to the end of his days on 3 September, he remained active in the teaching of his ideas. 

For Arquitectura Viva Justo Isasi reviewed the Spanish edition (published by Pepitas de calabaza) of Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments, a collection of writings on housing, urban planning, self-management, and holism.