“We anticipate that an average 2500 square foot house could be built in 20 hours.”
Behrokh Khoshnevis, professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering and Director of Manufacturing Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Southern California (USC).
Food and shelter are the foundation of everything we have. No society or individual can live without either of them. Everything else comes after.
Watch the video and imagine a world where everyone can have good basic shelter. No more tin shanty towns breeding disease, crime, illiteracy and hopelessness. Technology changes society. Let’s hope this technology can do what these folks think it can.
While I applaud Dr. Koshnevis in his high-tech and creative approach, the concept is far from reality in Barbados. The cost and logistical issues of manufacturing, shipping, and local implementation of his system are likely far beyond the means of most citizens or even developers.
Barbados already has buildings under construction that are cutting edge, energy efficient technology, using local materials and local tradespeople. Local masons, electricians, plumbers, and finishers are bringing their good skills to the table in the installation of insulated concrete buildings. These buildings take existing materials and engineering into the future with adoption of special concrete forming systems, designed in Canada, but crafted and installed by locals with local concrete and other materials.
The family and business structure of Barbados is not well served by pre-fabricated buildings sent from USA or who-knows-where, since local craftspersons and businesses have nothing to do with their creation.
For examples of these real (not just a concept) buildings, make an appointment to visit the Merricks project with the developers.
I challenge Barbados Free Press to follow up on this suggestion and either prove my claims false, or acknowledge their truth.
Regards to all
Douglas
Hello Douglas,
We’ve looked at your system before and we agree that it appears to be a good method of building. We haven’t really done much more than go by your website though, and I think we could do an article featuring some additional research.
Our problem with Merricks and Harliquin projects in general is with the house of cards financing and the marketing promises to potential investors that should win a Pulitzer Prize for best fiction.
Your building system might be excellent. Probably is. Please send us some project photos at barbadosfreepress (at) yahoo.com and we’ll use them in our story. If you want to write a bit about why your system is right for Bim, that would be great too.
Just make sure you get paid up front for every bit of material you deliver. In this risky economic climate you’ll never build a good business (or sleep at night) by extending credit to developers.
Good luck!
Marcus
While I found Prof Khoshnevis’ presentation on applying CAD/CAM to housing intriguing, and I would love to be able to be able to afford to live in a unique type of house with rounded walls, arches etc like the Iranian house, I thought Prof Khoshnevis was somewhat glib in dismissing the concerns some have apparently expressed over a likely significant increase in unemployment in the building trades if this automated house construction system were introduced on a widespread basis.
He gave the example of the significant decrease in manpower on farms as gradually automation and mechanization took over from human labour on farms and implied that just as the labour force was able to adjust to that change, many of those now in construction who became unemployed as a result of widespread implementation of CAD/CAM in housebuilding will adjust to this change as well. However when workers were displaced by machines on farms at least many of the displaced farm workers had someplace to go to to find meaningful and relatively well paying work, i.e they moved to the cities where they could find work on assembly lines in factories and manufacturing concerns.
Nowadays, in North America many of the good, middle class type jobs in manufacturing have been shipped off to Asia. Many North American workers who formerly had good paying jobs in manufacturing with good pensions and benefits have been thrown out of work as assembly lines manufacturing household appliance, electronics etc. have been shut down and moved overseas leaving the workers on unemployment insurance and scratching to find work as best they can and usually at significantly lower rates of pay and with less generous benefit packages when they do finally land a job.
I would hazard a guess the manufacturing industry that still remains in North America is increasingly run by the same CAD/CAM processes as Khoshnevis described in the video to keep their own input costs as low as possible. So just exactly what up and coming, expanding industries will there be for the thousands of unemployed carpenters, electricians, plumbers, masons etc. to move into to find a new occupation which can come close to maintaining a decent lifestyle?
Granted, the cost of housing will become significantly lower, but especially in the short term, will the net benefit of a decrease in housing costs be enough to offset the social and economic costs of widespread unemployment by thousands of skilled but now useless tradesmen without a means to support themselves and their families? I could see this new method of construction being a significant problem for governments if it is implemented too quickly without plans to have social benefits such as pensions, extended unemployment insurance benefits etc. being put in place to handle the displaced workers.
And yes, I know the buggy whip makers somehow had to manage when their jobs became obsolete and in those days they didn’t have all the do-gooder, government supplied social programs that exist today, but as with the displaced farm workers, the buggy whip makers had jobs to move into as at the time industry was expanding and manufacturing was taking off in a big way – quite unlike today’s economic environment.
More Jobs Predicted for Machines, Not People
By STEVE LOHR
A faltering economy explains much of the job shortage in America, but advancing technology has sharply magnified the effect, more so than is generally understood, according to two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The automation of more and more work once done by humans is the central theme of “Race Against the Machine,” an e-book to be published on Monday.
“Many workers, in short, are losing the race against the machine,” the authors write.
Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of the M.I.T. Center for Digital Business, and Andrew P. McAfee, associate director and principal research scientist at the center, are two of the nation’s leading experts on technology and productivity. The tone of alarm in their book is a departure for the pair, whose previous research has focused mainly on the benefits of advancing technology.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/technology/economists-see-more-jobs-for-machines-not-people.html?_r=1
GreenMonkey, you picked it.
While it is abundantly clear that improvements in housing and construction in general are LONG overdue, we must always count the entire cost of such change, not just a few benefits.
My experience in Barbados and across the Caribbean is best summed up by the “teach a man to fish” analogy. With easily-obtained technology, local people can use their own skills and materials to build not just “homes”, but true “Shelter”.
Douglas
Let’s not be afraid of the comeptition. Mr Koshnevis’s idea came to him after many years of mental activity and meditations. In other words, he did not sit around a bar or table and talk alot of rubbish of what he would like to do, he taped into his spiritual source. We have the capacity to do the same but we allow ourselves to become too engrained in our everyday activities, too many friends, without consulting our higher self. I am also guilty of this as well but at least I know that I have the capacity to find my niche if only I would spend less time engaged in my work (night, day, weekends, early mornings, late nights, public holidays etc) and what do I get, I am kept in oppression and cast aside when it comes to chances for promotion within our department. Mr Koshnevis at least got the time to not only visualize his dream but to eventually put it into action. Let’s find our niche through our higher self.
“Many years of mental activity and meditations” ???
Is that how houses are built? Get real!
Not one of you armchair theorists ever BUILT a house from foundation to finial.
Is this guy talking about building with STONE?
or shacking things together with deal board white pine
drywall, nail guns and spit,
like how the Americans do it, in Fla.?
-and then when Hurricane Andrew comes along…>/i>
“House construction: expensive, dangerous, slow and corrupt”
Expensive — Yes indeed, Barbados is an isolated country far from traditional natural materials, and as such most if not all building materials are foreign imports, thus very costly. No “REA”L local manufacturing industry or capabilities.
Dangerous — Possibly correct, however effective Health and Welfare Regulations(lack of effective government controls) could definitely make house construction SAFE for workers and purchasers.
Slow — Well this is a fact in Barbados, everything works on Caribbean time, as the saying goes Time to LIME.
Corrupt — Well the senior bureaucrats and politicians have to make a living !!!!
I think that new methods and materials have to be better than stick built homes, but the real gains are to be made in reducing the size of homes. You can do that by designing dual use rooms and built-in furniture and more intelligent use of space. 15 feet by 15 feet 2 story foyers are insanity!
Cool, comfortable, and safe insulated concrete buildings are being built on Barbados as we speak. Local craftspersons are adapting their skills to new materials and methods. Local concrete producers are adapting their products and equipment to new tasks. Local design professionals are specifying what we are beginning to call “concrete with brains” instead of what can only be called “pizza ovens” with conventional construction. Award-winning buildings of this sort in the Caribbean are getting recognition on the world stage…..see the new College of the Bahamas Library at:
http://www.quadlock.com/insulated-concrete-forms/ICF-projects/ICF_College_Library_Construction.pdf
As energy efficient concrete construction becomes standard in Barbados, future generations of citizens will be much less burdened with the cost of providing more generating capacity just so people can waste more of it.
211 correctly points out that the answers are not found in idly sitting in a bar exercising our jaws. I can personally attest to the fact that solutions are being made a reality in Barbados today, and I assure you that more examples are on the way.
Bless Dr. Koshnevis for his efforts and forward thinking, but REALLY bless the Bajans who are quite literally taking things into their own hands to make dramatic change and improvement to construction in Barbados.
Cheers to all.