Sawada Mansion which was built by only two people in Kochi, Japan is the one of most biggest self-build building in the world. The building had been built like agile process, lean startup, and living thing. It has been embracing changes, purpose, form, and community to keep up with the times since it was built. I think that it has a lot of agilities and we can learn a lot from it. I talked about it in Open Jam in Agile2008.

1. Agility of Building
Sawada Mansion
Takeshi Kakeda
kakeda@zensow.jp

2. I made it
for Open Jam
in Agile2008

3. Table of Contents
● What's Sawada Mansion
● What agility are there in Sawa-Man?

4. What's Sawada Mansion
(we called “Sawa-Man”)
● World's Biggest Self-builded Apartment
● It was built by only two people
● Big Building
– 60 rooms
– 70 meters
– 6 stories
● Illegal Building
● There're crane, rice field.

5. © Tetsuro
Kagaya

6. Who was built by?
● Mr and Mrs Sawada
built Sawa-Man
● Only two people!!
● They did everything
to build the mansion

7. Where is built in?
Kouchi city, Kouchi prefecture, Japan

8. When did it built?
● 1971-1973
– First period
● 1973-1976
– Second period
● 1983-1985
– Third period
● 1985-now
– small rebuilding
1st period
2nd period 3rd period

9. Why did they build Sawa-Man?
● Mr Sawada set his mind on building an apartment with
100 rooms
– When he was in fifth-grade at junior school.
● He wanted to work at needless mathematics and
language
– He was not good at mathematics, language

10. Build, Live in, Fix, Sell
● They know the domain very well

11. What agilities are there in Sawada
Mansion ?
● Build process
● Team
● Involved Customer
● Embracing Change

12. Build process
● Iterative
● Incremental
● Concept to Cash
● Build to
earn money
1st
peri
od
2nd
peri
od
3rd
peri
od

13. Team
● Mr and Mrs Sawada were builder
– Not architect
– Not study reinforced concrete
● Cross functional team
● Continuous learning
● Everything was done by themselves

14. Involved Customer
● They always listen to the residents
● They reply to their demand quickly
● They are residents too.

15. Embracing change
● They had reconstructed and re-partitioing in
Sawa-Man
● They don't hesitate to destroy, change

16. Some changes
● A slope through the mansion
● A lift to carry materials
● A crane to carry materials
● Flowerbed on the rails

17. There were a room, but...

18. There were a spiral staircase,
but...

19. Conclusion
● Sawa-Man is very agile building
– The “Hardware” building can be agile
● Can “Soft”ware learn from Sawa-Man?
● Please visit and see Sawa-Man!!

20. See also
✦ http://giantech.jp/pages/ikitema2/
SawamanForEmZero.html
✦ Article about sawada mansion(Japanese)
✦ http://www.slideshare.net/kkd/wiki-1830146
✦ Explain sawa-man as a building like wiki system.
(Japanese)