Homes 2016: Blueprint Broadside
First published as a Blueprint Broadside, Vol. 1, September 2004
Too many blueprints for the home of the future begin from the interior. They should start from the factory, argues James Woudhuysen and Ian Abley
It’s 2016. The Will Alsop Toyota Mark 4 two-storey model is taking market share from the 2015 Zaha Hadid Asda bungalow. The range of functions, quality of workmanship, customer service and regular upgrades is amazing. These manufactured homes are giant Apple iPods for their age: powerful, sleek, easy to operate and full of personality selected details. But never modular or plasticky.
This imaginative essay shows that the housing crisis demands a far more ambitious approach to prefabrication than the government and its agencies are currently delivering. Funding for research, development and design in the Office for the Deputy Prime Minister currently stands at £29 million, while the Ministry of Defence has £2.5 billion at its disposal for R&D. That needs to change, James and Ian argue. Instead of being a country of dilapidations, Britain needs to start using its design talent to offer solutions to the housing needs of future generations.
To open and download a PDF copy of the full article, click on this Homes 2016 link.
@jameswoudhuysen I use my bicycle every day. Exercise and access to shopping without any parking meters and all that fuzz. But alfa-cyclists are the worst. They are competing at 40 mph and always acting rudely to get where they are going.
A PRO-CAR CYCLIST WRITES: 12-1pm tomorrow on #R4, will be talking bikes, cars, pedestrians, public transport – and #JeremyVine
Stimulating piece on the #CrisisOfCustomerService by clever @ClaerB @FT.
All that Clinton-era #CustomerExperience guff was always for the birds - certainly compared with, er, price.
The new thang? Often there is NO service - and thus no #CX!
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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