Why Is Construction So Backward? (Paperback)

Foreword xi
Martin Pawley

Chapter I An Industry that barely deserves the term 1

1.1 Construction becomes a mainstream political issue 1

1.2 Progress, but only of a sort 4

1.3 Local small firms do up existing homes – and always work on site 11

1.4 Illegal, cursed and DIY 15

1.5 Arise, Sir John Egan 17

1.6 Background thinking in municipal strategy 21

1.7 Construction, risk and the wider crisis in capitalist innovation 26

Chapter 2 Backward perspectives: measurement, therapy, naturalism 37

2.1 The reduction of strategy to measurement 37

2.2 Campaigns for safety and against cowboys 38

2.3 Respecters of health, enemies of stress 45

2.4 The mantra of teamwork 47

2.5 Government buildings pioneer design as social engineering 49

2.6 New Labour’s sustainable communities 50

2.7 The messianic approach 54

2.8 Build-up brownfields forever 57

2.9 Out-of-date theories of urbanization 63

2.10 Out-of-date theories of Britain’s green and pleasant land 66

2.11 Key worker housing and the microflat mentality 68

2.12 Longevity and the Royal Institute of British Architects 77

2.13 Therapeutic and naturalistic perspectives meet in proximity 79

2.14 The Holy Trinity in architecture 84

Chapter 3 Backward practices: the regulation of urban districts, workplaces and the environment 109

3.1 Urban innovation as Business Improvement Districts 109

3.2 Innovation in the law around workplace health and business continuity 111

3.3 Innovation in the law around the environment 112

3.4 Quango quagmire: the ceaseless re-branding of Britain’s building regulators 117

3.5 Power in the building trade 127

Chapter 4 Architecture versus Building in the 1960s housing boom 132
Miles Glendinning and Stefan Muthesius

4.1 Industrialisation in post-war architectural perspective 132

4.2 Experiments in systems building in the 1950s and early 1960s 137

4.3 The reality of post-war mass production 145

4.4 State patrons of private-sector builders 149

4.5 The end of the boom 157

Chapter 5 False innovation and real innovation 163

5.1 Buildings as brands 163

5.2 The new prefabrication 178

5.3 Not fearing materials, but doing more with them and about them 194

5.4 Not fearing energy use, but getting it in proportion 205

5.5 Face time, playing with the virtual space, and monkeying with CAD 214

5.6 Organising wider aspects of IT to live up to their full potential 225

5.7 When teams model buildings in 3D 237
Richard McWilliams

5.8 The cultural climate impeding technological innovation 255

Chapter 6 To take human achievement seriously 271

6.1 Holding the line against the reaction to 9-11 271

6.2 How construction can catch up 282

6.3 Conclusion 296

Biographies 302

7.1 Ian Abley 302

7.2 Miles Glendinning 302

7.3 Richard McWilliams 303

7.4 Clare Morris 304

7.5 Stefan Muthesius 304

7.6 Vicky Richardson 305

7.7 James Woudhuysen 306

Index of names and subjects 308