Abstract
This paper explores the relation between the ‘DIY’ (‘do-it-yourself’) movement and ‘DIY architecture’, and the notion of social transformation, in examples of DIY manuals and discourse of North America drawn from the 1940s to the 1970s. The DIY movement emerged as a significant phenomenon in North America of the 1950s, where it was associated with a mainstream audience and a residential market. By the 1960s, the DIY approach was embraced by the North American counterculture as a self-sustaining sensibility that could overcome a reliance on the mainstream, consumerist society that spurned it. On the surface, the association of DIY with the counterculture and countercultural architects appears to denote a significant ideological shift from its original association with the beliefs and culture of mainstream North America and the nuclear family. However, one of the key characterisations of the DIY movement identified in the present paper is the way it is bound to the notion of social identity and transformation, regardless of ideology. Particular attention is paid to DIY manuals and discourse of the 1950s.
Highlights
There is much renewed interest in the radical social and political agendas of architects associated with the North American counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, including the discourse and publications of this fertile period.1 The countercultural DIY manual was an important educational platform through which counterculturalists could disseminate practical knowhow of construction and technology, and the philosophical and cultural ethos of the movement—a direct challenge to mainstream American values and lifestyles (Smith 2012: 9)
Fifty Things to Make for the Home (1941), by Julian Starr, is a North American how-to manual published just as the United States entered World War Two
For Brand, the Whole Earth Catalog (WEC) was a ‘catalog of goods that owed nothing to the suppliers and everything to the users’ (Brand, quoted in Kirk 2007: 1). Regardless of this claim, it could be argued that the WEC reinforced the association of social transformation with DIY action and consumerism because it advertised those books, products, suppliers and services deemed appropriate for the countercultural lifestyle
Summary
There is much renewed interest in the radical social and political agendas of architects associated with the North American counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, including the discourse and publications of this fertile period.1 The countercultural DIY (do-it-yourself) manual was an important educational platform through which counterculturalists could disseminate practical knowhow of construction and technology, and the philosophical and cultural ethos of the movement—a direct challenge to mainstream American values and lifestyles (Smith 2012: 9). The manuals from the early phase as well as some of the later countercultural manuals referred to here focus on small-scale residential DIY projects.2 Despite this focus, the transformation of the private residential interior inflects social identity and status outside of the home.
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