From Thomas Edison’s Flop To The Future Of Construction?
Frank Lloyd Wright made many contributions that have revolutionized architecture. One of the less-obvious (to most) was the use of concrete and concrete block (CMU) as a sculptural medium that truly epitomizes the whole form follows function paradigm. And somewhere along the line, a draftsman (maybe it was an architect) with a few too many nights without sleep pondered, “what if we could just skip making blueprints and hiring a contractor, and use a 3D printer to build the whole house.” What does this have to do with anything?
First some background on the bit about Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison is a household name as one of the most gifted and prolific inventors of all time. One of Edison’s greatest struggles was trying to determine the best material to be used as filament in the incandescent light bulb. Statistically, the light bulb was a flop – out of thousands of materials he tried, only one really worked very well. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” So maybe that didn’t turn out so bad after all. Unfortunately some of Edison’s ideas really didn’t fly. And no, we’re not talking about elephants. In August of 1906, Thomas Alva Edison proclaimed to the world that he was going into the construction business. He was going to change America and the rest of the world by producing concrete home. Concrete homes cast from a mold in one truly monolithic pour. Bathtubs, beds, who knows, maybe he even had an idea for concrete windows. It didn’t work. But, he did come up with some novel ideas that have become more commonplace as a result: modern production housing, aerated concrete, and even concrete houses – just not necessarily the way he envisioned it.
But wait – there’s more!
Inspired by 3D printing technology – more appropriately called rapid prototyping, some enterprising folks at USC are gearing up for a test of a robot that will “produce” the shell of a 2-story home here in Southern California without a single builder on site.
How does it work? The robot sprays liquid concrete and gypsum to form the structure creating an allegedly watertight shell all within 24 hours. But this team is not alone – a competing team in the UK is going to unveil a similar robot that takes slightly longer (a week), but will include mechanical and electrical. And it doesn’t stop there! There is even talk of a modified gypsum material that will replace window glazing.
What we want to know is how this will affect the construction defect industry? How would you allocate responsibility to a software programmer?
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16 January 2007 | Construction, Litigation, Technology | Comments
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