Why technology won't change architecture

Sam O'Gorman says if you took a construction worker from the 1920s to a modern-day project, they probably wouldn't be too surprised by what they saw.

“Overall, building construction in Europe and the US is still very much manual and not that different from how it was built 100 years ago,” said Gorman, an associate partner in the real estate practice at consulting firm McKinsey.

In 2017, the McKinsey Global Institute concluded that productivity in the construction industry could increase by 50-60% and the industry's global value could increase by $1.6 trillion (£1.3 trillion) per year.

Since then, improvements to production processes and the use of new software and apps have increased efficiency, but not by as much as hoped, according to McKinsey.

“The construction industry has been slower to digitise than many other industries and has been slower to adopt digitalisation in the broader sense,” O'Gorman said.

Several potentially industry-changing technologies have been touted in recent years, including 3D printing, the extrusion of concrete and other materials into house walls.

The University of Maine is working on such a project: developing the world's largest 3D printer.

The printers mixed wood fibers and plant-based resin to form the 600-square-foot (180-square-meter) home.

“The first prototype home, BioHome 3D, has survived two Maine winters very well, and we are now focused on 3D printing the entire town of nine homes,” said Dr. Habib Dagher, executive director of the University of Maine Center for Advanced Structural Composites.

But 3D printing homes remains more of a demonstration project than a practical proposition: 3D printed homes tend to be expensive, and the walls are very thick, making them difficult to build on anything other than open, flat sites.

Although many 3D printed construction projects are proudly showcased, the number of homes actually built this way remains very small.

O'Gorman and Dr Dugger say another technique, called modular construction, could make building more efficient.

It involves manufacturing building components in a factory, transporting them to the site and lifting them into place.

“I definitely think this is the future. The quality of construction will be much better. A lot of little mistakes happen on a construction site,” Dr Dagher said.

“The more work you can get done in the factory, the better. Quality control is obviously much better, as is the quality of workmanship.”

But the technology is still not widely adopted, says Neil Jefferson, managing director of the Confederation of Home Builders.

“The problem with manufactured housing is that you have to reserve materials at a factory to build a house, and then when the materials arrive, you have to go ahead and do what you planned,” he says.

“But right now in this country, projects are plagued by delays because of the government's approach to planning policy. This won't work. We need a more flexible approach.”

Developers need a degree of confidence that they can sell completed homes quickly and often need to change plans as the project continues in response to changes in the market. This is less of an issue for projects for local authorities or housing associations but can be an issue for private developers.

One company looking to get around some of these problems is Bristol-based Automated Architecture (AUAR), which plans to license microfactories that use robots to build wooden houses.

These microfactories will see the construction of buildings up to six stories high, assembled from standard parts either in the factory itself or on-site.

The idea is that large construction companies could license the microfactories for an upfront fee of around £250,000 plus ongoing monthly fees.

“AUAR's partners can quickly bring innovative, high-quality, low-energy homes to their customers at market prices without having to invest millions of dollars to set up large factories like modular housing companies,” said co-founder and CEO Molly Claypool.

Automation shortens construction times, reduces risk and waste, while also increasing profit margins for developers, she says: Labor costs per project can be 20 to 60 percent lower than using traditional construction methods.

The company already has four customers and aims to increase that number to 140 by 2030 and build more than 30,000 energy-efficient homes per year.

While the homebuilding industry hasn't undergone the same major transformation as other industries, many of the smaller, less visible parts of the process are being digitized.

“It's the actual construction part that gets the most news and interest – it's pretty analogue and hasn't changed much. When you look at the rest of the chain, it's actually digitised pretty well,” O'Gorman says.

“People are using digital tools to identify land, they're using AI to predict future values, they're using a variety of metrics. The design process has become very digitalized over the last decade.”

And it's these behind-the-scenes improvements that are likely to have the most impact on making the homebuilding process more efficient, says Carolina Tortilla, director of AI at industrial technology company Trimble.

Activities that were once recorded on paper and in filing cabinets are now digital, so quantity surveying, health and safety procedures, commissioning and handover activities, and carbon footprint management can all be done through apps and computer software.

But there is still more that can be done.

“A big challenge is that the construction industry is very fragmented and it's hard to adopt uniform technological advances,” Tortilla said.

The main contractor manages many subcontractors: mechanical, electrical, plumbing, finish works, earthworks, etc. Each team is affected by the other teams' plans and how they execute them, and mistakes on site often have a dramatic impact on costs at a later stage.

But technology could help mitigate these issues: For large construction projects, creating 3D models of buildings and components and making them available to everyone could help spot inconsistencies before they become bigger problems, Tortilla said.

“Such actionable data not only facilitates communication between construction and back-office operations teams, but also informs forecasting, planning and purchasing decisions,” she says.

“This will allow for a smoother process even as the industry remains fragmented.”