"One cannot delay the future, the company failed because of its museum mentality, it invented the rope its hanging from" (the digital camera), so go the commentators. Legacy industries across the world look down on their shoes and wonder, what does this mean for us?
What does it mean for architects, for the construction industry? True, architects and even more the construction industry are not a company (like Kodak), we don't have a legendary founder (Eastman), we are not really tied up in the digital revolution. We have been around for eons, we cater to a very basic need (humans need shelter) that will be around forever, so, why would the Kodak story mean anything for us?
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| T Square, slide ruler and blue prints are gone from architects' offices |
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| replaced by flatscreens, workstations and CAD |
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| but construction sites can still look like they would have 50 or a 100 years ago |
The construction industry today is one of the greatest anachronisms in all of production. Possibly even farmers have revolutionized their production more than the construction industry. (Atlantic Cities article). Just go and watch how houses, offices and stores are built, even today. The excavators and dump trucks, the concrete trucks, the concrete block and brick trucks, the lumber trucks, the goods dangling at the hooks of cranes, the welders riding on those beams way up in the air, finally the carpenters, plumbers, HVAC guys, electricians, dry-wallers, painters and tile layers. Each trade a different company, each with deliveries from different suppliers, each with their own foremen, each their own communications (walkie talkies now often supplanted by Blackberries), each with their own contract either with the General Contractor or with a construction manager or even directly with the invetsor/owner.
Just think about how buildings are conceived: Owners who go out to hire architects who then hire a platoon of different engineering firms who then, in a rather archaic process, each draw up a design for their own segment of the puzzle. Each, if we are lucky, have their own QA/QC process, then the architect will somehow review it all before finally a corresponding platoon of underpaid and often under-qualified local government architect and engineer reviewers will check the design for code compliance for a permit. Likely they will request all kinds of changes. Eventually contractors bid on the design and tell the owner what the project will cost. At this time the owner may discover for the first time that the price is above his budget. In that case the design will get "value engineered" a euphemism for butchered. Maybe the design needs to go back to the permit reviewers because it changed too much. And all this happens before the first backhoe or crane shows up for construction. And then the real waste begins.
Yes, the architectshave replaced T-squares and mylar with CADD and maybe even "Building Information Modelling" (BIM). But except for large and fancy projects one can safely assume that the engineering firms involved will not use BIM and be still stuck in two dimensional line CADD. So the computer generated 3D models live only at the architect's office and cannot be exported to the platforms of the engineering fiorms or the contractors. Today the contractors have more expensive machines, they planthe work of an army of laborers and trades with detailed Primavera flowcharts and erect columns and studs with the help of laser. But most of the laborers remain pretty unskilled, often hired off the street for the particular project. Yes, we they deal with some newbuikding materials such as improved insulation materials and better glass, even with IT wiring for fancy electronics that might be strung among the studs and hidden in the hollow walls. But the true and trusted materials are still concrete, brick, wood, steel and gypsum board.
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| Modern indoor curtain wall assembly (Harman, Glen Burnie) |
In fact, the entire method of separation between design and construction, once typical for almost anything made, today is nothing but a quaint relic unique to among all major industries. It reflects essentially pre-industrial methods and defies all efficiencies of production we associate with the industrial revolution. As part of this, most of the production occurs out in the open and not in the controlled environment of the shop floor. There is hammering, sawing, cutting and patching going on on every construction site all day long with waste piling up in the dumpsters.
In his book Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America’s Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry, construction industry expert Barry LePatner analyzes how the $1.2 trillion industry ranks highest among industries on the “waste and inefficiency” scale, and lowest in the amount of money invested annually in technology and R&D. Indeed, America’s sole remaining “mom and pop” industry wastes at least $120 billion each year! (website. Wall Street Journal Review)
This, of course, is no new insight. In fact, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Corbusier and Buckminster Fuller, there is no shortage of architects and tinkerers who tried to bring the "house" in line with the machine, usually with disastrous consequences. In the wake of these failed attempts of equating the building with a machine many fellow architects successfully argued that buildings are different from machines in that they are grounded in one place (lest we talk about the American phenomenon of mobile homes, which, indeed, are made like trucks) and thus, have to respond to unique settings, need to be customized and are unique by necessity. Essentially the machine guys went down in defeat and their products are mostly derided today. (see Corbusier's Plan Voisin for Paris).
Which leaves us where we are, with a splintered industry, ineffective production, high cost, huge energy inefficiency (about 40 percent of all energy needs come from buildings, not counting their construction) and resources. As an industry the world of construction is slow, messy, inefficient and deeply wedded to the the past. A perfect candidate for a "Kodak moment" of its own.
As a subset of the industry, architects are still rather glamorous in films, but they represent the largest contingent among unemployed professionals. Those who are employed are underpaid in comparison to almost any other professional, scores who have their own business preside over tiny operations with 1-5 employees. The profession, highly skilled to solve today's complex problems with holistic thinking, find themselves squeezed between engineers, ever new specialty disciplines and a lack of funds for the expensive buildings our current process produces.
Who would not agree, that the construction industry, badly hit by the current recession, is at some sort of crossroads and that the future will be vastly different from the past?
We will explore what all this means in further blogs or maybe by adding to this one. We will have to look at "integrated design", "integrated project delivery models", LEED and sustainability codes, at BIM. We have to look at the growing trend of large engineering conglomerates (like AECOM) to buy up small firms, engineers, architects and al,l and provide one-stop design. We have to look at industries where the makers of the machinery increasingly provide also the design (Siemens for hospital operating rooms). We have to look at the quest for sustainability and energy efficiency, reserach for biometric building materials and how methods from other industries can work for us.
And, finally, we have to also look at the growing body of evidence that suggests that the well being of us humans is vastly dependant on the quality of our buildings and the built stuff around us.
(modifications were made 1/22/11)
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