Piece by Piece, a Factory-Made Answer for a Housing Squeeze – The New York Times

 The future is coming and it’s modular:

The United States needs new housing, but its building industry isn’t big enough to provide it. The number of residential construction workers is 23 percent lower than in 2006, while higher-skill trades like plumbers, carpenters and electricians are down close to 17 percent. With demand for housing high and the supply of workers short, builders are bidding up prices for the limited number of contractors. Advertisement Construction prices nationwide have risen about 5 percent a year for the past three years……

 

 

The global construction industry is a $10 trillion behemoth whose structures determine where people live, how they get to work and what cities look like. It is also one of the world’s least efficient businesses. The construction productivity rate — how much building workers do for each hour of labor they put in — has been flat since 1945, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. Over that period, sectors like agriculture, manufacturing and retail saw their productivity rates surge by as much as 1,500 percent. In other words, while the rest of the economy has been supercharged by machines, computers and robots, construction companies are about as efficient as they were in World War II.

Source: Piece by Piece, a Factory-Made Answer for a Housing Squeeze – The New York Times

Blowing down the Saddledome and building a new Victoria Park – Calgary – CBC News

Imagine you were given a serious chunk of Calgary’s core, a blank sheet of paper and a pencil, and told you could turn it into whatever you wanted.That’s pretty much what the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation (CMLC) is doing with Victoria Park.Planners and a couple of architectural firms are hammering away at a vision for the future of one of Calgary’s oldest neighbourhoods.It’ll be a 20-year plan to turn what’s currently a seriously bizarre jumble of skyscrapers, empty lots, an aging Saddledome, a bus barn and several rail lines, into Calgary’s entertainment district of the future. And a cool new place to live.

Source: Blowing down the Saddledome and building a new Victoria Park – Calgary – CBC News

GCR – News – More disasters predicted as analysis exposes “widening construction knowledge gap”

 

An unprecedented study of 6 million pieces of data claims to shows that the knowledge framework underpinning UK construction is not fit for purpose.As the industry reels from the deadly Grenfell Tower fire, the study’s authors warn that practitioners do not have ready access to critical knowledge and that more mistakes are “inevitable”.Designing Buildings Wiki, an open knowledge base, says it has undertaken the first comprehensive mapping of construction industry knowledge.

Source: GCR – News – More disasters predicted as analysis exposes “widening construction knowledge gap”

Penda Designs Modular Timber Tower Inspired by Habitat 67 for Toronto | ArchDaily

Penda Designs Modular Timber Tower Inspired by Habitat 67 for Toronto,Courtesy of Penda

 

Penda, collaborating with wood consultants from CLT-brand Tmber, has unveiled the design of ‘Tree Tower Toronto,’ an 18-story timber-framed mixed-use residential skyscraper for Canada’s largest city. Drawing inspiration from the distinctly Canadian traditional modular construction, including Moshe Safdie’s iconic Habitat 67, the tower is envisioned as a new model of sustainable high-rise architecture that can establish a reconnect urban areas to nature and natural materials.

Source: Penda Designs Modular Timber Tower Inspired by Habitat 67 for Toronto | ArchDaily

Who Are The True Builders?

You look in your history-books to see who built Westminster Abbey, who built St Sophia at Constantinople, and they tell you Henry Ill, Justinian the Emperor. Did they? Or, rather, men like you and me, handicraftsmen, who have left no names behind them, nothing but their work?

William Morris, “The Lesser Arts” (1878) quoted in “VISTA – the culture and politics of gardens”

WAN:: Timber tower by Team V Architecture

 

With construction due to start in the second half of 2017 HAUT is on track to become the world’s tallest timber tower The municipality of Amsterdam in the Netherlands has selected Team V Architecture with Lingotto, Nicole Maarsen, ARUP and brand partner NLE to develop a building that is a serious contender to become the tallest timber tower in the world.HAUT, will be a 21-storey wooden residential building by the Dutch River Amstel with construction work expected to start in the second half of 2017. HAUT promises to be a prototype of building in an innovative, sustainable and environmentally-friendly manner.

Source: WAN:: Timber tower by Team V Architecture

Got wood? Meet Australia’s tallest (proposed) timber building | News | Archinect

 

Combine cross laminated timber, glue laminated timber, and the desire to connect with nature while providing ample creative working space, and you have the 5 King Tower, a 52-meter timber structure with the strength of concrete and steel (but a much smaller carbon footprint).

Source: Got wood? Meet Australia’s tallest (proposed) timber building | News | Archinect

Paul Krugman: Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan is one big scam – Salon.com

Paul Krugman: Donald Trump's infrastructure plan is one big scam

Trump’s plan to rebuild the country’s infrastructure is really a scheme to enrich wealthy people…..

There is also the fact that private investors will have no interest in building infrastructure that can’t be turned into a profit center. Privatizing these public projects is a gratuitous hand out to select investors, who would be aquiring public assets for “just 18 cents on the dollar, with taxpayers picking up the rest of the tab.

Source: Paul Krugman: Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan is one big scam – Salon.com

Norway to build world’s first floating underwater traffic tunnels | Inhabitat – Green Design, Innovation, Architecture, Green Building

norway-underwater-tunnel-02-889x500

 

An ambitious new plan in Norway would install a series of “submerged floating bridges” to help travelers easily cross the nation’s many fjords. At present, the only way to travel across the bodies…

Source: Norway to build world’s first floating underwater traffic tunnels | Inhabitat – Green Design, Innovation, Architecture, Green Building