Church Grove: A Case Study in Self-Build

By Lawrence Blough and Deborah Gans

Introduction: The Significance of Church Grove

From the transit station Ladywell in Lewisham, if you walk west, you find yourself in a small enclave of charming shops and cafes, an indicator of how the Ladywell District is fast becoming desirable after a period of decline common to many small urban centers. If you take a right, you enter the District of Lewisham Center, passing by Ladywell Fields, a park assembled from three historic water meadows used for irrigation when the borough was farmland, before farms became manor houses in the 19^th century, and then housing estates in the twentieth, with an acceleration in development after the bombing of Lewisham during WW2 and the housing shortage that ensued. From there, you can glimpse the residential towers built beginning in the 1960s, some now in disrepair, that still speak to our ongoing struggle to meet housing needs and overcome inequities. Across the road are the Baines Villas, a row of tidy, modest rowhouses built in 1858 with the arrival of the railroad, a type that now appears desirable. Along that row, you come upon the entry to a small mews lined with more urban cottages ending with the unexpected, a great 4-story portal crossed with walkways opening onto a view of the River Ravensbourne. You have arrived at Church Grove, a complex of 36 apartments arranged in two wings bending along the river and connected at their center by continuous walkways facing onto a community garden. With its cheerful patches of color, various sidings, and active geometry, the architecture communicates an ambition to launch a new chapter in the history of housing observed on the walk from the train, but a chapter still deeply connected to a distinguished local legacy- that of local self-builders.

The “how” of community building and the “what “of architecture are perhaps nowhere better conjoined than in the self-build housing movement, founded on the premise of collective process from project inception and construction to its ongoing shared management. Most often, these endeavors have taken the form of agricultural cooperatives or communities of individual homes united by a legal property structure or a social understanding that is more or less a formal covenant. Lewisham is host to a series of such self-build endeavors begun in the 1970s, the mews of Walter’s Way, Segal Close, and Nubian Way, all conceived and directed by Walter Segal, who was also architect of the Segal Method, the system of timber frame and panel infill from which these individually tailored houses were self-built. For Segal, the method was a means to greater ends of sustainability, adaptability and reuse, and the possibility of homeownership for those who, without the self-build system, could otherwise not afford it. By disseminating his method and the values embedded in it, he hoped to make it a replicable model. ^[1]

Church Grove is the first project of the Rural Urban Synthesis Society (RUSS), a land trust begun with the intention of breathing new life into Segal’s model. While the built work and its collective amenities are admirable simply for the architectural quality with which they concretize our current affordable housing aspirations, for RUSS and for this PennPraxis study-series, it’s deepest significance is the invention of a process that brings collective self-build into the urban present, scaled up to meet current demand for housing, in ways that address the social and financial needs of those most often left out of market-based opportunities- even so-called affordable ones. The story of its 15-year journey thus far follows.

Step 1: The Founders’ Story

We aim to establish a new precedent, a replicable model in community-led housing that will benefit people currently unable to access housing on the open market. As a Community Land Trust, we invite all local people to get involved, become a member of RUSS, and participate in the realisation of this project.[2]

Kareem Dayes, Founding Chair, RUSS

As the story goes, while helping his father update the family home on Walter’s Way, where he had grown up, Kareem Dayes and his friend from the neighborhood, Alice Grahame, gathered a group of half a dozen people around a dinner table to think about sustainable development and the housing crisis. Kareem had been living in Sanford, the first purpose-built housing cooperative in London, which dates to the 1970s. The conversation ultimately produced the formal establishment of RUSS as a volunteer, community-led land trust with an original board of directors all of Walter’s Way. They raised the £1000 needed to incorporate as an Industrial Provident Society for the Benefit of the Community through a series of donated musical events (Kareem is a musician) and registered as such with the Financial Conduct Authority in 2009 because land trusts are not legal corporate entities in Britain. While taking inspiration from the mews, they were motivated by its challenges, particularly its trouble sustaining affordability in perpetuity. In Segal’s case, the London Council provided the land to the self-builders, who then worked, sometimes collaboratively, on their individually tailored homes, achieving homeownership they could not otherwise afford. The Council sponsored mortgages for a 50% share of each builder’s individual home equity, and then discounted their share according to the market value of the housebuilders’ unpaid labor. The Council held on to the remaining 50%, which the homeowners paid off over time as rent. In other words, this model allowed self-builders to effectively rent-to-own and acquire freehold when 100% of the mortgage had been paid. Once paid for in full, the homeowners could then sell the property without restriction. Consequently, the mews thrive today with a combination of original and second-generation owners who have altered them over time, either in the spirit of Segal’s architectural pattern book or in unexpected ways. However, they are increasingly desirable and costly; the financing model has not assured long-term affordability.^[3]

In order to correct for long-term financial drift, Dayes and his team set up RUSS as a land trust, whereby individual house builders would own shares in a collective property similar to a limited equity cooperative. There are currently over 700 community land trust projects constituting about 2000 dwellings throughout England, as well as an emerging movement at a smaller scale throughout the EU, with a count of at least 200. In the United States, where the community land trust movement first began, there are about 250 trusts devoted to housing, with another 1500 organized for agricultural purposes. While there are variations, in general, land trusts are structured like RUSS. They are member-controlled land entities where residents are trust members who additionally hold equity shares in their farm plots or buildings, while the property itself remains under the control of the trust. A land trust can hold multiple properties, each with different resident shareholders. Additionally, some land trusts open their membership to a community beyond their board and residents. (Figure 3)

In the case of RUSS, membership is open and constitutes its largest community. Anyone, including those reading this study, can purchase a share and become a voting member at the Annual General Meeting. In this way, a neighborhood resident in proximity to a RUSS development can move from a general community stakeholder to a voting participant. Residents of a development, called leaseholders, have representation on the Board of Trustees, but the stakeholders-at-large can participate in developing a project’s initial vision and program. General stakeholders in RUSS include volunteers, who have taken on important roles in building the community components of the project. The third form of stakeholder is the local authority, called public stakeholder, which in this case is the London Borough of Lewisham. The RUSS Board of Trustees then directs and, at this time, manages its projects - namely Church Grove. Currently, the general membership is about 1200, with approximately 40 taking active volunteer roles.

RUSS sees their particular identity as a land trust in the creation of ‘sustainable neighborhoods’, not just buildings, in keeping with the original concept of the Segal Mews. The residences are to be affordable and of mixed tenure, meaning both renters and owners. RUSS is a majority owner in that it holds a limited amount of equity in each apartment in order to guarantee the future financial sustainability of the whole. This shared ownership structure also limits the potential for gentrification observed by Kareem at the Segal Mews, where individual homeowners could sell to the highest bidder. Russ apartments are structured as limited equity cooperatives in perpetuity, meaning that allowable resale will be calibrated to preserve homeowner value in light of long-term market changes while preventing windfall gains and gentrification. Currently, their goal is to keep all units valued at a minimum of 20% below market rate (both equity and rental). The other feature distinguishing RUSS from other land trusts is its devotion to a co-design process and, subsequently, to a co-management structure in which residents have agency and responsibility in the ongoing life of their homes and community. As Anurag Verma, the current Board Chair of RUSS, describes it, “many trusts resemble more conventional not-for-profit developers who build affordable housing for their residents who then hold equity stakes, while RUSS engages future residents and neighborhood stakeholders in a comprehensive co-design process of the building and its grounds, including collective shared amenities.”^[4]

The early working group set out to codify their mission and shared values even before the board and legal entity of RUSS were formed. Jon Broome brought an outline for discussion to the group that reflected his long experience as an architect in community self-build after working with Segal. Consensus emerged through a series of membership meetings as encoded in the Ten Guiding Principles, which are found to this day on the RUSS website: ^[5]

1. RUSS will create socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable neighbourhoods in the city.

2. Our neighbourhoods should balance the interests of residents, the wider community, and the Council as landowner.

3. RUSS should build truly affordable homes.

4. Decisions that affect our neighbourhoods should be under the control of residents.

5. Our developments should be embedded in the local community and include space for community use.

6. The neighbourhoods should reflect the local population with a mix of families, couples, and single people, both young and old, and with a range of incomes.

7. RUSS neighbourhoods should not only reduce environmental impacts by efficiently using energy and building materials, but should proactively create resources of power, water, and food.

8. Residents should have the opportunity to be involved in the design, construction, and management of neighbourhoods.

9. RUSS developments should create opportunities for training in organising and building for residents and others.

10. Our projects should be self-financing with robust financing and delivery systems.

In their development process at Church Grove, RUSS did indeed hew close to these principles.

Step 2: Proof of Concept: Church Grove

RUSS is amongst a significant minority of Community Land Trusts that develop new homes and assets themselves. This form of community development is central to our objective of maximizing the agency of our community and giving them a say in the design, construction, and management of their neighborhoods.

Anurag Verma, RUSS Board Chair

Figure 5 RUSS Timeline. [Illustrations codesigned by PennPraxis based on authors’ original in collaboration with Barbara Brown Wilson, Dan Etheridge, and Daniel Carmelo]

The first task, after the establishment of RUSS in 2009 as an entity, was to create a development project, which became Church Grove. Jon Broome, a collaborator of the “dinner table” of founding members, wrote a history of Segal’s local self-built enclaves based on his experience as one of their architects, within which he included a business plan for a future self-build. He had found a derelict former school property along the Ravensbourne River, opposite the train tracks that he proposed be granted to RUSS by Lewisham Council for development. Such a proposal to Lewisham Council was not unexpected. The UK has an official policy that supports individual custom and multi-family self-build as a means to “diversify the housing market,” and all district councils must keep a register of parties interested in self-build and their proposed projects.^[6] Although most localities do not seriously entertain many self-build options at the multi-family scale, the legacy of Segal in Lewisham provided a receptive context for Broome's document. The Greater London Authority and charitable funders, including the bank Troidos, then helped RUSS with financial modeling, grants, and loans for a feasibility study begun in 2012. By 2015, RUSS had submitted the winning competitive bid for the property by proposing to develop it as a “100% affordable, multi-tenure scheme of social benefit^[7],” and the next year, it was granted the development agreement for a 250-year lease on the property for £1, subject to obtaining planning permission and confirmation of funding.

Step 3: "Community Building Builds Communities"

^[8]

“One resident told me that initially, they didn’t see the big deal about the community aspect, but now that they’ve moved in, they understand it fully. They said, "You do the community first, then the building."

Anurag Verma, RUSS Board Chair

The selection of residents is not community visioning per se, but it is a fundamental component of community engagement with impact on the vision. As outlined in the RUSS Ten Guiding Principles, the premise of Church Grove was that all residents would have a connection to the larger Lewisham community and, in this way, solidify the relationship between new development and the neighborhood. The building was likewise intended to benefit the community-at-large through shared site amenities, such as the gardens and a community hub. The next question was how to assemble those residents.

The selection formula was a mix of financial and social parameters. Future residents had to prove they had the resources to purchase a home at Church Grove, but they also had to meet the income limits of the Greater London Authority, which required evidence that they could not afford a comparable local dwelling on the open market. Meanwhile, RUSS had to structure a mix of apartment sizes and tenure that could meet both their desire for social balance and their needs for immediate and long-term income. The income structure was to be a mix of home ownership sales, rentals from shared ownership flats, and those reserved for former Council Housing residents. Russ would keep some equity on a sliding scale in each of the co-operative units as well.

It is worth noting that, unlike in the United States, Britain has a history of mixed tenure dating from the Thatcher era privatization of Council Housing, where private owners and council tenants began to find themselves side-by-side. However, the reverse scenario found at Church Grove, meaning the intentional inclusion of former Council tenants in private development, versus the influx of private owners into Council flats, is rare if not unique. ^[9]

The mix of tenure models in combination with the wide variety of apartment types created complexity, but that complexity served the project well over the fifteen years it took from inception to construction. There was no want of people on the waiting list for flats so, if a household left for their own reasons, another could take their place within the unit mix. The lists provided flexibility for prospective residents too, who could often find an alternative unit if their needs changed. Even Kareem Dayes found himself needing a larger flat than he had originally chosen to accommodate the addition of two children to his household over those fifteen years.

Step 4: The Co-Design Process

The design process began before the list of residents was in place with the early forging of the Ten Guiding Principles, which proved invaluable in directing the course of the project. RUSS commissioned an initial “control scheme" from the architects Architype, in consultation with architect Jon Broome, to confirm what could be built on the site in terms of public approvals. In this way, the potential resident group and members-at-large could proceed with the co-design process without the danger of creating false expectations around what was possible.

The co-design with the potential residents then extended for about six months, April-September in 2016, led by the architects and Jon Broome with his colleague Sam Brown. Over a series of five workshops, they first guided the group in establishing shared values and then desired design outcomes reflecting those values. ^[10]

The Hello Event gathered provisional resident group members for the first time after their selection from the ballot list, but before the full financial review of each of their accounts were complete. The meeting laid out the financial checks, a process for obtaining approval and the various possible equity stakes. The group then established their own principles of governance and communication and had a first discussion regarding preferences for self-build.

A kickoff Design Festival of Ideas followed. It introduced “the control scheme” and the process of submitting planning applications. There was a group site visit, followed by an initial workshop and a social event. For the workshop (at a library), the potential residents split up into groups and addressed 4 themes that then structured the entire design process: Site Planning, Character and Feel, House Plans, and Sustainability and Energy/Self-Build. Each theme was introduced with the RUSS vision for the topic, a summary of design decisions that had been proposed by the architects, and a series of questions and printed images as prompts for discussion. Participants noted their ideas with the canonical post-it note. Comments were recorded in categories of Essential, Nice to Have, Not Relevant and Controversial.

The meat of the design process took place in four subsequent evening workshops, each dedicated to one of the themes and following the methodology introduced at the Festival of Ideas. Sessions included: a technical presentation so participants could make informed decisions on subjects like energy; subject discussions organized by the leaders with questions as prompts, and design workshops structured around designs prepared by the architects based on previous meeting input, thus moving the process forward. During the house plan workshop, the residents drew alternatives to those provided. The results of each session were collated in a Design Menu that included a record of the attendees’ comments grouped by the categories and even, in some cases, the percentage of attendees who had one opinion or another.

The Design Menu produced after the Character and Feel event serves as an example. It contains a chart entitled “Character and Materiality “that records community member priorities in the categories: Essential, Nice to Have, Not Relevant, and Controversial, as well as an open-ended list of attendee questions. The lists are quite extensive and reveal initially mixed responses to design elements such as the continuous terraces and individuated building thresholds that ultimately came to define the project. The attendees found communal terraces with greenery on every floor to be essential, big balconies nice to have, but passing by one another to be controversial.

It was during a fourth workshop packed with content on both sustainability and self-build that RUSS tried to get a detailed sense of how versed residents were in construction on the one hand, and how interested they were in self-build on the other. It included an extensive survey of the residents’ motivations and desires for self-build. Many of their answers reflect anxieties about the responsibility of taking on such a venture: “If I sign up for 15% equity (to be accomplished through self-build) what happens if I cannot commit? If I can only work two days a week? Can someone else cover for you?” Other responses sound more confident and speak to larger ambitions.” Can I learn to do foundations? “ These survey responses were an important working document for RUSS in structuring the self-build process at Church Grove. It was clear that many residents would have limited time to devote to construction because of job and family obligations and needed to control their scope of work; and RUSS then tried to plan accordingly.

With the outline of the design in hand, the workshop leaders presented the drawn conclusions back to the resident group for approval. The resident group (excepting yet unselected former Council Housing tenants) then brought the plans to the wider community and public authorities for input. The great walkway bridge is the most prominent feature motivated by community input, in particular from residents of the adjoining mews who did not want their views of the river blocked. Going public marked the integration of the co-designers into the full process of making Church Grove become a reality and the start of its development phase.

Step 5: Co-Development

“When I first joined, there was a lot I couldn’t follow, and I kept having to interrupt to ask questions. Things like "What is RIBA Stage 3 or Stage 4?"—none of that meant anything to me, so it was a big learning curve. It was partly because I was new to construction… But also, there were some significant decisions to be made. For instance, whether to move ahead with detailed design before we had planning permission for the minor material amendments. That meant investing a lot of money on the assumption we would get approval. If we didn’t get started, we’d be way behind, but it was a big risk without the guarantee of permission. Those decisions were weighty, and I didn’t have the experience to say, oh, in a previous project we did this.

It's probably always tricky to induct new trustees because there's a lot of new material to take in. No matter how well-organized the induction process is, it's really only when you engage with the material that you start to absorb it. It's about finding the right balance—you want people who are outside the process to be involved, to ask naive questions, and be cautious. But it takes quite a lot to get them up to speed.”

Eleanor Margolies, Resident Trustee of the Project Board

As any architect and client knows too well, co-design does not end with the project down on paper but extends throughout the development and even the build process. RUSS self-builders, as co-designers, were able to dial in their individual apartment plans and finances along the way. All residents also had a voice in the larger development process through the presence of a resident trustee, Eleanor Margulies. Ellen is a writer, theater-maker by profession, and environmental and housing activist by commitment. Like all of the eventual residents, she had ties to the Lewisham area, where she had grown up. She knew of the project early on and first applied in 2016, but was selected from the waiting list three years later, after the initial design process. Soon after she volunteered as a resident trustee, in order to better understand some unexpected conditions in the development she had just bought into.

At the time of Ellen’s arrival, it became clear that the projected budget for Church Grove did not align with actual costs. While such a mismatch is not uncommon for developers, for RUSS, given their commitment to co-design and co-management, it created a need to invent protocols for making changes to a plan pre-approved by its community. The structure of the RUSS governance model was an outline for how the protocols would unfold. In that model, residents are beneficiaries whose interests are represented by resident trustees on the RUSS board. The other categories of trustee are non-residents selected for their relevant experience and commitment to values. The board as a whole is the management, entrusted with fiduciary responsibilities and decision-making that will benefit both the residents and RUSS at large.^[11] Resident trustees are the voice of the collective at the table of decision-making for general business; but for these budget challenges an additional Project Board reporting to the full board was thought necessary. Charged with the management and documentation of all changes, this Project Board included paid project operations staff, trust volunteers for oversight, board members with the needed technical expertise and Ellen first as its resident trustee, then as chair of the project board and subsequently as its managing director, which was a part-time paid role.

“After the tenders [came in high] this board started meeting every few weeks, then every week, and even more frequently in between. There was a lot of work happening in the Project Board, especially during the lockdown. Dinah, the Operations Director, who was in a paid role, and Mike, a volunteer, were also part of it. It was a mix of paid staff members and volunteer oversight.”

Eleanor Margolies, Resident Trustee of the Project Board

The resulting changes in the project will be familiar to those with experience in value engineering: plumbing has become more rationally stacked, the variety of unit types has decreased somewhat, and the geometry of the massing has been slightly simplified. Two duplex ownership apartments were added to the east wing, bringing financial benefits to the equity structure and also simplifying the architectural design, as a public walkway was no longer required on the second floor. Some residents bemoan the loss of wood detailing and its warmth, which had made it to the Essential category on the “Character and Material” list; but the individuated dwelling facades enlivened by colors that were selected by the residents and the color-coordinated furnishings on the porches outside their front doors express a shared pride of place.

Step 5: The Self-Build Process

“From that [working with Segal] experience, I realized that anyone can build a house. The idea that you need prior experience or specific skills isn’t necessarily true. People learn, and they receive help. The big takeaway was the immense sense of achievement people gained from it, an experience that brings invaluable social benefits and builds self-confidence. When you have communities of self-confident people, it positively impacts their education, health, and employment prospects.”

John Broome

For RUSS, self-build refers not just to the wielding of a hammer during construction, although the confidence it gives a person can be profound. Rather, self-build refers to the entire concept of co-design, meaning the agency a person has over their housing, socially, physically, and financially, as both an individual and a member of a larger community responsible for its collective well-being.

Still, the financial and experiential commitment residents made to physical self-build shaped the development process itself. RUSS offered various degrees of self-build to maximize opportunities for this involvement, from installation of simple finishes to a complete build-out. Of the 36 flats, there were 16 self-builders and 8 households that elected to completely fit out empty shells, with just utility stub-ups provided. No flat, other than those for former Council tenants, were delivered 100 percent complete with each purchase price discounted in proportion to the work left to be done. Residents could thus control their mortgage based on the discounted purchase price and on the economy of their finishes. As Broome describes, the success of Church Grove is in part a function of these cost savings, but also a matter of the community cohesion and empowerment built through interaction with fellow self-builders. But it had its challenges.

Unlike the community barn-raising ethos that characterized Walter’s Way, the integration of self-build into a multi-family, four-story, concrete frame construction site was nothing if not complicated. For reasons of safety and insurance, access to the site was restricted to conventional working hours and approved people, such that a spontaneous evening get-together of a self-builder with help from her friends was not allowed. When there was a substantial delay in the frame and shell construction, the self-building also stopped. In October of 2021, the budget for the self-build manager ran out, and with it the required insurance, stopping the self-builders for months. A final obstacle to finishing was the lengthy bureaucratic process of receiving Certificates of Occupancy, during which self-builders did not have access to their future apartments. Even with their C of O’s in hand, some residents were still putting up cabinets and tiling 9 months after moving in, which does not necessarily distinguish them from many a homeowner who has embarked on an improvement project.

The support offered the self-builders came from several sources. RUSS began with a three-day training course, after which they provided a self-build management team, including a carpenter and an architect, whose contract, unfortunately, ended before the self-build was finished. The self-builders had internal resources among them, notably an electrician, although most households ended up hiring their own. Those who built out their homes from shells learned by watching the hired professional contractors install partitions, plumbing, and ceilings of the flats brought to finish level. All self-build interventions had to meet codes; and oversight was provided so they did. Still, the fragmented schedules of the self-built households who had different work and family responsibilities made offering support challenging.

The delays had impacts on the financial planning and stability of both residents and the larger development. A delay in the C of O meant that the self-builder could not move in, but it also meant that RUSS could not sell the flat to the self-builder and receive the purchase monies with which to fund ongoing construction of the larger development. Reciprocally, without the Certificate of Occupancy, the resident could not receive the mortgage necessary to buy the flat or to cover their own remaining self-build expenditures. A similar situation occurred when the building warranty company delayed signing off on the entire development, temporarily preventing the sale of units.

With the building at Church Grove complete and all of the apartments occupied as of 2025, RUSS trustees agree that the physical self-build within multi-family housing in a highly regulated urban context seems the most difficult component of the holistic co-design process, but nevertheless one of great value.

“I’ve also learned that self-build doesn’t necessarily save money if you factor in the time commitment. If you have the money, my advice is to hire someone, get it done, and move on with your life. It’s tough to juggle self-build, family, and other responsibilities.

Regarding the benefits of these projects, there’s an incredible amount of social value. The community aspect, the multi-generational living, and the consensus-based decision-making are all really interesting. For example, we have residents who gather to decide what to plant in our shared garden beds. Some people are very involved, while others aren’t as interested, but everyone understands the importance of reaching a consensus. Building consensus is hard work, but it’s a valuable part of socialization and community building.”

Anurag Verma, RUSS Board Chair

There is an element at Church Grove, however, that did reap the benefits of self-build without the challenges, namely the Community Hub. When a project development takes as long as 15 years, it is difficult to sustain Interest and collective buy-in if there is nothing to show for it. Therefore, many community-based organizations understand the value of even a small interim project, be it a garden or a garden shed. For this reason, as well as for the simple fact they had nowhere to meet near the site other than the local pub, in 2017 RUSS crowdsourced financing for the co-design and self-build of a community center on site. Even the Mayor of London pitched in. The design build of this wood, free-standing building more closely resembled the “barn raising” model of Walter’s Way. Even on drawings filed with authorities the title is Ladywell Self Build with no architect listed other than RUSS, indicating the degree to which it was a resident and membership driven design process. The Hub Team, including construction managers from Habitat for Humanity and from the contractors for the housing, ROOFF then managed the build in 2019 with the efforts of ninety volunteers. Windows found in a dumpster and flooring from an exhibit on the work of Walter Segal completed its self-build character. At the time, the Hub stood on the otherwise empty site as the place of meeting for the residents and a RUSS School for Community Led Housing, staking its claim for the future housing that, in both a literal and philosophical sense, would be built around this collective.

Step 6: Built Community

“What makes it different, though, is that you do not see a formality, or the overbearing hand of an independent aesthetic, in the arrangement of spaces. Instead, you see an arrangement born out of reflecting a different order. Every building around the city reflects a productive order of some form—social, economic, or capital. Here you are… facilitating and delivering social value, rather than focusing purely on aesthetics. The ordering emerges from the process itself—it will have an order because it must be built.”

Anurag Verma, RUSS Board Chair

The final resident roster of Church Grove is proof of social community benefit. It includes former Council Housing residents who are beginning to integrate with the equity stakeholders, teachers, musicians, electricians, writers, retired people, a carpenter, two pediatricians and a paramedic. In the short period the building has been occupied, there have been several births, and the courtyard is filled with children who bring their families together.

The promise of this emerging community is even more striking in that many of the residents were not part of the original cohort engaged with the workshop design visioning but have arrived at various stages with equal enthusiasm for the building and its larger project. Some simply moved in off the waiting list as long as nine months after the building was completed and partially occupied. This indicates that, somehow, the community-based design worked for those who participated and manages to serve those who did not. What are the perceived benefits and of its architecture?

As discussed, Church Grove has two wings of housing connected across a great portal crossed by walkways at each of its upper levels. Underlying the building’s site-specific responses to the river along which it bends is a recognizable type form of London social housing, namely slabs of flats accessed from exterior “streets-in-the-air.” Precedent projects in the Brutalist style have fallen out of favor as evidenced in the recent dismantling of Robin Hood Gardens, designed by Alison and Peter Smithson in the early 1970’s, to make way for a “regeneration” project considered more conducive to healthy community. So, it is noteworthy that the Church Grove residents embraced this organization while adjusting its character through their co-design processes. In lieu of the more anonymous entries pressed up against the corridor streets in the precedents, walkways at Church Grove open onto generous porches creating thresholds to front doors individuated with color. In addition, Church Grove has multi-story lightwells that separate porches and so enhance the sense of dwelling privacy, as does the active folding geometry of the walkways. In these features, the architecture of Church Grove mitigates the negatives of the earlier projects but preserves the benefits of the type, most significantly the cross light and ventilation of apartments that have both front and rear exposures, and a building devoid of long, dark central corridors.

The ground floor of Church Grove is primarily residential, again in keeping with many precedents of London social housing, with its collective components set within the exterior landscape of the commons. The laundry, mailboxes and a small office are located within the building proper, in proximity to the vertical circulation of stair and elevator, as is a guest flat that can be let by building residents for short periods of time. Because the site is in a flood zone, the ground floor residential is raised several feet, necessitating ramps, which are celebrated rather than hidden.

Given the two-block organization, RUSS then had to choose how to arrange the different apartment types across them. They settled on clustering all the duplexes in the eastern block, in part because it allowed them to shorten the upper-level walkway. But this also means that the smaller flats of the former council residents are all on the western side, somewhat curtailing social mix across the building, which in turn has somewhat slowed the emergence of a totally integrated community.

Step 7: Emergence

“It’s interesting how interconnected everything is. For instance, we had to revise the allocations policy. Initially, it was written in terms of pre-move-in language, talking about allocations and buying a flat in due course. So, we had to discuss what happens now that everyone is in. If a vacancy comes up, does an existing resident have priority, or does it go to someone from the wider community?

The advantage of giving priority to residents is that it allows people to move around within the community, which helps maintain the sense of community we've built. But the downside is that it can make the community insular, limiting opportunities for new people to join.”

Eleanor Margolies, Resident Trustee of the Project Board

The goal—or as one resident put it— “utopian dream,” for Church Grove is a self-managed, totally integrated community. In its current, newly born state, it benefits from substantive support from the parent RUSS organization, and a group of trustee and non-trustee volunteers. The financial self-management has a stable structure dependent on rents and shares; but the social interaction and any current initiatives executed in common are still a work in progress. RUSS purposefully did not pre-determine the organizational framework for the residents, believing that it had to emerge from the “bottom-up.” At the current time it is informal, with a recognized need to put some more structured protocols in place. Self-selecting groups of residents have taken the lead on various projects such as the self-build of the playground (completed as we write this) and the establishment of the community garden. As of March 2025, a schedule of community meetings has been established where residents can bring their issues to a forum for discussion.

The community Hub remains an important center of the commons at Church Grove. It hosts resident meetings and wider community events. Our visit coincided with a private hire for a full-day retreat, which brought with it the added benefit some rental income to support the commons, after which residents generously hosted us with a pot-luck supper. It will once again be the home of the RUSS School of Community-led Housing currently on hiatus, where it will offer residents and the public the know-how of self-building in its largest sense. Of course, the best lesson for the public is the life-in-action that any visitor to Church Grove can see for themselves, from children running in the commons, to residents chatting on walkways, and the flowerboxes on the railings,

CODA:

Even if we don’t do another project, it is impossible to quantify the impact we’ve had. Other nascent land trusts in the area, like CASH in Deptford, have engaged with us and taken inspiration from what we’ve done. They told us how much it meant to them to see our launch.”

Joel Simpson, Volunteer and Activist

The largest ambition of RUSS is to create an ecology of housing developments within the unified framework of their land trust. This structure would provide great flexibility for residents who would be able to move among apartments and among RUSS developments. The vision recalls that of the late 18^th century utopian socialist Charles Fourier and his dream of multiple, networked, live-work collectives called phalansteries disposed across the French agrarian landscape; although RUSS, in distinction from Fourier, seeks a replicable development methodology, rather than a socio-architectural typology, allowing each of their built communities to emerge from its co-design process. In order to move this larger project forward, RUSS exercises on-going self-reflection, as many of the quotations in this paper indicate. In conclusion, here are several fundamental considerations that are topics of discussions among RUSS board members and residents.

Flexibility and Adaptability: Adaptability and Flexibility within a clear framework of end principles characterizes both the RUSS development process and the intended functioning of its projects over the long term. In part, the fifteen-year build process at Church Grove made these characteristics a necessity as resident lists changed, apartment types were rethought, and financing shifted. But this ethos of flexibility and adaptability derive also from the original Segal Method, which likewise begins with a set of well understood and trusted parameters, namely the frame and fill of a design-build system, and then produces individuation and innovation, namely the lovely variety of the mews. At Church Grove, the Ten Guiding Principles established as part of the RUSS mission provided parameters for the adaptation of “the control scheme” to resident desires through co-design. They offer clear values without constricting design options and could guide all RUSS projects. The decades of self-build and community engagement that the team leaders brought to this effort needs also to be acknowledged, because no set of principles on paper can take their place.

Costs: Including the contractor as a partner from the get-go is a reputable way to control the price of construction. In this case, the original builder did not attend to the project sufficiently to produce an accurate pro-forma, which granted could be hard to accomplish within an open-ended co-design process. A separate cost estimator working directly with the design leadership might have been a better choice. The subsequent design-build model, increasingly popular in the States as well, can benefit project delivery and cost, but it can also empower the builder-architect in ways that overshadow co-design decision-making. Nevertheless, even during the design-build revisions, RUSS kept the project intact because of the clarity of the control scheme framework, the strength of its Project Board, and the need to keep public approvals in place.

Self-Build: While RUSS plans to include self-build in all its future projects, they would want the offering of unfinished shells to have a different financial structure, whereby resident shareholders would buy them when unfinished and/or be subject to a limited time frame within which to receive Certificate of Occupancy so that RUSS could predict the influx of capital.

The challenge (for RUSS and the self-builder) is ownership. When we handed over shells to our self-build group, we wanted them to sign a license agreeing to complete the homes to a certain standard. But they were hesitant, so it ended up being an act of faith. RUSS, as the landlord, handed over homes in a shell condition, and the self-builders completed them, obtained the building certificates, and then bought the homes from RUSS.

If we could sell a partly completed home directly to someone needing a mortgage, we could recover some of the build costs upfront and pay down our loan earlier, reducing interest. …If we could sell six or eight homes as shells, everyone benefits—the contractor has less risk, RUSS can recoup costs, and the self-builder takes on the responsibility of finishing their home. Ultimately, it is their home, so it makes sense for the responsibility to shift to them.

However, finance can make you vulnerable. Like any developer, if a project gets delayed, you end up paying a lot more. Anurag Verma, RUSS Board Chair

Land Activism: In most large cities, including the US, the cost of the land makes the cost of housing unaffordable so that a governmental authority must often provide subsidy in the form of property as a gift or long-term lease. RUSS received such a lease for Church Grove. One can imagine a land trust behaving also as a land bank, purchasing undervalued property for a future development. But whether purchased or donated, this land will most likely be undesirable for free-market development and accompanied by challenges such as flood zones or compromised infrastructure. For RUSS, and other land trusts, these seeming problems actually add to the social benefit of their project. In the case of Church Grove, RUSS addressed a derelict site with a development for common good. RUSS entered Lewisham as activists, engaging community stakeholders, who could then become trust shareholders and even residents. Such a model of land activism can undo the NIMByism that besets so much current development in challenged and advantaged neighborhoods alike, replacing conflict with collectivism and shared investment.

The future of this community is its most provocative aspect, full of possibilities. Will families stay and move throughout the complex as their needs change? How will new households, without the bonds of the RUSS experience, move in and integrate into its life? The invention continues:

Acknowledgements:

We would like to thank PennPraxis and its Executive Director Ellen Neises for this opportunity and the collaborative process structured around it. Thanks to Timothy Schuler for his thoughtful feedback along with that of Elliot Bullen and Anushka Samant.

We can’t extend enough gratitude to RUSS members Anurag Verma, Jon Broome, Ellen Margolies and Joel Simpson for their time and generosity as they helped us to first frame and then complete our study. It is their efforts, knowledge, experience and creativity that this paper too briefly records…. we hope accurately. We thank them and RUSS residents for welcoming us into their community and their homes. We hope our images capture the delights of Church Grove.

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PennPraxis would like to thank Frederick Steiner, Michael Grant, and the remarkable case study authors, who helped shape our approach to this project. The design of the timeline illustrations and organizational diagrams in the series was originated by Daniel Carmelo, Barbara Brown Wilson, and Dan Etheridge, and extended to other cases with their permission in order to enhance comparability of the cases. Case Studies in Design is edited and published by the PennPraxis team of Ellen Neises, Anushka Samant, Elliot Bullen, Darcy Van Buskirk and Dyan Castro.

Case Studies in Design was initiated with the generous support and guidance of Lori Kanter Tritsch Case Studies in Design Innovation Fund.

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Recommended citation:

APA: Blough and Gans (2025). Church Grove: A Case Study in Self-Build. In Case Studies in Design. PennPraxis, Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania.

MLA: Blough, Lawrence and Gans, Deborah. “Church Grove: A Case Study in Self-Build.” Case Studies in Design, PennPraxis, Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, 2025

1. Urban growth: Lewisham Boroughwide History, Lewisham Character Study 2010

   https://lewisham.gov.uk/myservices/planning/policy/planning/evidence-base/ldf-evidence-base--urban-design

   see also: Lewisham Archives, https://libraries.lewisham.gov.uk/digital-content/lewisham-heritage ↑

2. Kareem Dayes, About Russ (Russ Website, https://www.theruss.org/about/. ↑

3. RUSS Resident Trustee, Eleanor Margolies provided this history. Much of this study has as its source our interviews with trustees, founders, and volunteers who also kindly reviewed a draft of this paper. Additionally, excellent studies of Walter Segal abound. See for example:

   Alice Grahame and John McKean, Water Segal Self-Built Architect (Lund Humphries 2021). ↑

4. Quotations from Anurag Verma, John Broome, Eleanor Margolies and Joel Simson are all taken from interviews conducted by Blough and Gans during the fall of 2024 into the spring of 2025. ↑

5. Ten Guiding Principles, https://www.theruss.org/about/guiding-principles/ ↑

6. The Self Build and Custom Housing Act 2015, https://www.gov.uk/guidance/self-build-and-custom-housebuilding ↑

7. Design Brief RUSS Church Grove, archive of Jon Broome ↑

8. Design Brief RUSS Church Grove, archive of Jon Broome ↑

9. Conversation with Sarah Watson, Deputy Director, Citizens Housing and Policy Council, NYC

   Also see: Iona Petkova, In Common, chapter 1. ↑

10. Jon Broome has supplied us with selection of documents from the five sessions from his personal archive, some of which are included in the appendix. ↑

11. See Petkova, In Common p 34 for further commentary on board structure ↑