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.
Here is an overview of the book written with Ian Abley – click on this ‘Why is construction so backward?‘ link to buy the book from Amazon.
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
Innovators I like
Robert Furchgott – discovered that nitric oxide transmits signals within the human body
Barry Marshall – showed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid
N Joseph Woodland – co-inventor of the barcode
Jocelyn Bell Burnell – she discovered the first radio pulsars
John Tyndall – the man who worked out why the sky was blue
Rosalind Franklin co-discovered the structure of DNA, with Crick and Watson
Rosalyn Sussman Yallow – development of radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method of quantifying minute amounts of biological substances in the body
Jonas Salk – discovery and development of the first successful polio vaccine
John Waterlow – discovered that lack of body potassium causes altitude sickness. First experiment: on himself
Werner Forssmann – the first man to insert a catheter into a human heart: his own
Bruce Bayer – scientist with Kodak whose invention of a colour filter array enabled digital imaging sensors to capture colour
Yuri Gagarin – first man in space. My piece of fandom: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/10421
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield – inventor, with Robert Ledley, of the CAT scanner
Martin Cooper – inventor of the mobile phone
George Devol – 'father of robotics’ who helped to revolutionise carmaking
Thomas Tuohy – Windscale manager who doused the flames of the 1957 fire
Eugene Polley – TV remote controls
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