View current page
...more recent posts
Crap houses
Here's what I dislike about the tech/geek/art community, as exemplified by the Eyebeam "reBlog." reBlog is a bunch of recycled links from a particular group of bloggers, curated by a single individual down to a coolest-of-the-cool selection. Fine, so far, but there's very little in the way of text, thought, or explanation here--just feeding the endless craving for (mostly tech) novelty. So, I see this item culled from boingboing captioned "Print houses from CAD drawings using an adobe-extruding robot." I'm not completely following this. [If I'm not mistaken, the reBlog post has since been slightly expanded.] I click the link and learn more about an aesthetic nightmare waiting to be born, which we're supposed to think is great, I guess:
A robot for "printing" houses is to be trialled (sic) by the construction industry. It takes instructions directly from an architect's computerized drawings and then squirts successive layers of concrete on top of one other to build up vertical walls and domed roofs.You know what that sounds like to me? That sounds like shit. Frank Gehry meets Planet of the Apes. Besides throwing tradesmen out of work (yeah, I know, boo hoo, progress marches on), it has the potential to turn the construction industry into McDonalds, shitting out thousands of McHouses, McFlats, McMalls, and McOffices. And, it violates what ought to be Rule One of fusing technology and the arts (including architecture): "You shouldn't do something just because you can." How about a little criticality here, art/tech people?
UPDATE: Bill Schwarz has another link on the "extruded house." This one doesn't look like Planet of the Apes, more like the stone slave huts they put up in the Caribbean years ago for people working in salt ponds and the like. And sure enough, the obligatory quote: "It's hard to imagine construction unions taking this lying down, and union opposition is expected. But [P]rofessor [Khoshnevis, the inventor] points out that we are moving towards a society in which just about everything else is fabricated by machines. Why should houses be different, he asks?" Yeah, why? Nasty damn unions, always getting in the way of capitalist innovation.
UPDATE 2: Post edited slightly so I sound like less of a Luddite, if that's possible. Jim has a good response to my outburst in the comments.
UPDATE 3 (Feb 2005): I take back everything I say about the Eyebeam reBlog since they were kind enough to indulge my tech-skepticism by inviting me to guest reBlog for a few weeks.