Category Archives: Posts … words

Kindly reviewing my book on Walter Segal, SuedDeutsche Bauwirkschaft of Stuttgart unfortunatly misled readers, fascinated by the most westerly point of Africa, into believing it contained Learning from Senegal. 

I have to declare, for those same or other readers fascinated by Africa, that Walter Segal, Self-Built Architect, published by Lund Humphries, London, 32 years later at the end of June 2021, only discusses African architecture when Segal was in its North-eastern corner, working in Egypt.

However their review’s encapsulation of Segal’s project still stands:

This book tells of the work of an architect who always assumed that houses should be simple, useful and cheap. Houses should be friendly to people and the environment. They should be such that the residents feel comfortable in them. Universal common sense, of course? Unfortunately not in the age of luxury and fashion. It is a very readable book. (Sueddeutsche Bauwirtschaft, 3/1989)

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January 1989 and (for one never steps into the same river twice) May 2021

The second book on Segal has finally moved into production at Lund Humphries and is due for delivery to any eager potential readers in May 2021.

I had imagined that my Walter Segal, English Architect –  for the nice series of 20th Century English Architects – would be published even before this one, Walter Segal, self-built Architect, was written. But  sponsoring publishers RIBA and Historic England faded, as Liverpool UP joined the stalwart Twentieth Century Society; all, it seems, remains in dark pipeline.  However, this rather different book, written by myself with a final section by Alice Grahame, is actively in production for publication in May 2021.

This book’s first section focuses on Segal’s formative years in Continental Europe where his father Arthur was an important painter and Walter grew up surrounded by leaders of the European avant-garde. On qualifying as architect in Germany just as the Nazi party came to power, Segal moved to Switzerland, Mallorca, Egypt and finally to London in 1936.

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Keeping away from the alluring and addictive surf (I find I’ve wasted hours before I get surf-bored), I was surprisingly nudged awake this week by a younger architectural historian friend asking if I’d seen a tweet about Walter Segal’s archive. She then kindly showed it to me.

Perhaps it happens to all tweets at holiday periods which ask a question. Certainly here a fascinating chain ensued, all stemming from an innocent private chat at a New Year party. Who knows, it may end with a wonderful, safe, organised and accessible home for the life-long material left by the ever meticulous Walter Segal.

But once on the surf this morning, that soon got me floating past all sorts of undecaying plastic in the data ocean – and suddenly meeting one of my own photographs of Walter Segal up a ladder. 

Ho hum. This opens a piece in a magazine called AnOther, it seems.  Quite a charming little piece about the Segal self-built streets in Lewisham (actually a puff for Alice and Taran’s lovely book), it also used two more of my pictures from those early self-building days. I wonder where they found them? But at least, although I was never shown this 18-month old article before, they do correctly credit my photos. It can be read here. 

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SPECIAL OFFER!  I have a copy of this classic masterpiece at greatly reduced price one week only – £129.99!

Otherwise, Segal fans, you will just have to wait for a while more for a new book to  appear… soon…

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