Why Is Construction So Backward?

Construction is vital both to Gross Domestic Product and to today's politics. Prime Minister Tony Blair himself chairs a cabinet committee on the Thames Gateway development, to the east of London. Housing has proved a big factor in Chancellor Gordon Brown's worries about the Euro. But the construction sector is one of the world's weakest in innovation. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's target of just 4000 homes to be made through prefabrication shows how building remains a 19th century affair, not a 21st century one.
Drawing on the latest technologies that have emerged both inside and outside the sector, Why is construction so backward? forms a detailed, practical alternative to the conventional wisdom in building design and urban planning. It is a powerful call for reform, and a sharp polemic against architecture as social engineering and environmentalist dogma.
Contains a foreword by Martin Pawley
Includes contributions from such high profile figures as Stefan Muthesius and Miles Glendinning
Praise for Why is construction so backward?:
'Very compelling… a significant piece of research and thought leadership. Essential.' Colin Bartle-Tubbs, UK Operations Director, Deloitte
'Welcome and timely… takes on an industry that has revelled in complacency for too long.' Bernhard Blauel, Principal, Blauel Architects
'The authors are prepared to be daring, reframe the question and posit new paradigms. Reflecting effortlessly across the literature of property, business, market research and construction, the book's kaleidoscope of ideas, examples and images gives it a refreshing depth of insight and breadth of vision.' John Worthington, Founder, DEGW
'A tour de force of polemical provocation. This timely work forces one to think about construction in the broadest terms. Required reading.' Paul Finch, Editorial Director, EMAP Construct
'A must-read for architecture students and also important for practitioners, this is a passionate critique of the construction industry and the planning process, and brings new depth to debate about the relationship between architecture and society.' Penny Lewis, Editor, Prospect
'Shock therapy for construction policymakers.' Austin Williams, Technical Editor, The Architects' Journal
'The introspection of architects, planners and politicians involved in urban, housing and planning issues needs a little turmoil, perhaps. The book is persuasive, at times heavily prescriptive, and certainly argumentative – but it may catalyse a wider and more informed debate on the future of UK housing policy.' Michael Hulme, Director, International Centre for the Study of Media, Technology and Culture, Henley Management College
'The pleasure of this book is not only that it takes apart, with great gusto, the all-pervasive environmental prejudices of our time, but that it does so with such detailed scrutiny of construction and with such passion to build more and better.' Alan Hudson, Director of Studies in Social and Political Science, Oxford University Department for Continuing Education
'Important not just for architecture and design, but also for marketing – especially given how the corporate world uses different design elements, such as buildings, to build brands.' Lisbeth Svengren and Mats Frick, Stockholm University School of Business, Sweden

JAMES WOUDHUYSEN is a Director of Audacity Limited. He has worked on innovation and new product development with some of the world's top corporations, including AT&T, BT, Compaq, IBM, Microsoft and many more. He lectures and broadcasts worldwide, is Professor of Forecasting and Innovation at De Montfort University, Leicester, and contributes each month to IT Week.
IAN ABLEY is the Project Manager of audacity.org. He works as a site architect in London for a major commercial practice, and is involved with the co-ordination of innovative services technologies into the structure and fabric of new development.

"…this impressive book…[is] exhaustively researched and entertainingly written." (Financial Times, 25 March 2004)
“…a welcome and necessary book…” (Architectural Review, July 04)

Foreword Martin Pawley.
Chapter 1. An industry that barely deserves the term.
1.1 Construction becomes a mainstream political issue.
1.2 Progress, but only of a sort.
1.3 Local small firms do up existing homes – and always work on site.
1.4 Illegal, cursed and DIY.
1.5 Arise, Sir John Egan.
1.6 Backward thinking in municipal strategy.
1.7 Construction, risk and the wider crisis in capitalist innovation.
Chapter 2. Backward perspectives: measurement, therapy, naturalism.
2.1 The reduction of strategy to measurement.
2.2 Campaigns for safety and against cowboys.
2.3 Respecters of health, enemies of stress.
2.4 The mantra of teamwork.
2.5 Government buildings pioneer design as social engineering.
2.6 New Labour’s sustainabl e communities.
2.7 The messianic approach.
2.8 Built-up brownfields forever.
2.9 Out-of-date theories of urbanisation.
2.10 Out-of-date theories of Britain’s green and pleasant land.
2.11 Key worker housing and the microflat mentality.
2.12 Longevity and the Royal Institute of British Architects.
2.13 Therapeutic and naturalistic perspectives meet in proximity.
2.14 The Holy Trinity in architecture.
Chapter 3. Backward practice: the regulation of urban districts, workplaces and the environment.
3.1 Urban innovation as Business Improvement Districts.
3.2 Innovation in the law around workplace health and business continuity.
3.3 Innovation in the law around the environment.
3.4 Quango quagmire: the ceaseless re-branding of Britain’s building regulators.
3.5 Power in the building trade.
Chapter 4. Architecture versus Building in the 1960s housing boom;
Miles Glendinning and Stefan Muthesius.
4.1 Industrialisation in post-war architectural perspective.
4.2 Experiments in systems building in the 1950s and early 1960s.
4.3 The reality of post-war mass production.
4.4 State patrons of private-sector builders.
4.5 The end of the boom.
Chapter 5. False innovation and real innovation.
5.1 Buildings as brands.
5.2 The new prefabrication.
5.3 Not fearing materials, but doing more with them and about them.
5.4 Not fearing energy use, but getting it in proportion.
5.5 Face time, playing with virtual space, and monkeying with CAD.
5.6 Organising wider aspects of IT to live up to their full potential.
5.7 When teams model buildings in 3D Richard McWilliams.
5.8 The cultural climate impeding technological innovation.
Chapter 6. To take human achievement seriously.
6.1 Holding the line against the reaction to 9-11.
6.2 How construction can catch up.
6.3 Conclusion.
Chapter 7. Biographies.
7.1 Ian Abley.
7.2 Miles Glendinning.
7.3 Richard McWilliams.
7.4 Clare Morris.
7.5 Stefan Muthesius.
7.6 Vicky Richardson.
7.7 James Woudhuysen.
Index of Names and Subjects.