Are ‘self-build’ High-rises Coming to a City Near You?

As urban populations boom, homelessness is rising in some of the world’s richest cities and, across the developing world, nearly one billion people live in sprawling slums.

While governments and property developers struggle to provide answers, some residents are taking matters into their own hands, by constructing buildings that are rising higher into skylines, and that they can call home.
Globally, fewer than one in 50 buildings is designed by a professional architect, according to Carlo Ratti, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

And now, some leading architects are redefining their own role from designing buildings to offering guidance for eclectic self-build projects. These range from low-cost towers that aim to improve lives in some of the world’s poorest urban neighborhoods, to utopian skyscrapers that promote imaginative new ways of living.