Stuck on yet another plane. Air travel is getting worse, isn’t it?
There’s an interesting stat in the American Way magazine. While productivity in most industries has increased by 80% or so in the last 30 years, in design and construction, it’s dropped by 20%.
Now, I know that housing standards have increased, as has oversight, and the technologies we put in our homes - air conditioning, heating, telephony, etc - have become far more demanding, but it’s still amazing that there’s been so little thought put into innovating the process of design and construction. We still construct on site, rather than simply fabricate and assemble.
The article talks about the Loblolly House, designed, fabricated and assembled by Keiran Timberlake. For the home - which is stunning - they developed basic building components that could be fitted together on-site. Floor cartridges were built like the body panels of a car, prewired for water, power and radiant heat. Kitchens and bathrooms were prebuilt modules, insulated for energy efficiency and with built-in plumbing.
As the housing industry starts to go green, why not get more productive at the same time? It could even drive prices down. It’s time to think about construction innovation.
Other hostage-on-a-plane musings: man, Skymall is filled with crap!
A quick note - I’m off on vacation until May 29, so no new posts until then. Have a great Memorial Day weekend.
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:11 am
Driving efficenicy in construction can only help the entire world. I wonder what the positive impact in thrid world countries could be? For instance in areas of mass population concentrations. Prefabrication does however lend itself in some ways to increased transporation costs to and from non-centralized areas (ie shipping more air).
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:02 am
Does innovation in design necessarily mean more efficiency and less customization? Not always. I would point to the architect Susan Susanka’s “Not So Small House” as incredibly innovative design - all in a house with a smaller ‘footprint’.