Why is residential construction stuck in the dark ages.

THE SHELTER JOURNAL  |  NO. 001

Why Housing Became Unaffordable.

Residential construction has not innovated at the pace of the problem it is now being asked to solve.

People often blame rising house prices on expensive land, expensive materials, high interest rates or a shortage of skilled trades.

Each of these contributes to the problem.

But they are not the problem. They are symptoms of a much deeper issue.

After working in architecture and construction for almost four decades, I have long known that the residential building industry has simply not innovated at the pace of the challenges it now faces.

Most innovation in residential construction has occurred at the level of individual materials and products. We have better insulation, stronger glazing, improved waterproofing membranes, more efficient appliances and increasingly sophisticated digital design tools.

Yet the basic method of producing a home remains largely unchanged.

While other industries such as Aerospace & Automotive have transformed through automation, repeatable production, digital coordination and advanced manufacturing, residential construction continues to remain dependent on age old construction.

"General housing has very low levels of design innovation, with the majority of housing design undertaken by construction companies with little or no architectural input, and it relies on low-technology, cottage-based craft skills for its physical realisation.

The typical industry-provided house plan and design has not changed substantially for 60 years.

Architecture has a negligible relationship with the issues of general housing and a continuing difficulty in articulating the contribution that it could make to general housing through its fundamental disciplinary procedure – architectural design.”

Dr Shane Murray, professor of architecture at RMIT University. Circa 2000

We still build most homes as though each one were a unique prototype.

Houses, that eventually become homes are assembled in changing weather conditions. One trade follows another. Progress depends on the availability of increasingly scarce skilled labour. Thousands of individual decisions must be made correctly on site, often by different people working for different businesses under constant time and cost pressure.

The result is predictable.

When skilled labour becomes scarce, costs rise. When projects take longer, holding costs rise. When work must be corrected, costs rise. When regulations and approvals become more complex, costs rise. When demand grows faster than governments and industry can release and service land, prices rise again.

Australia is one of the largest countries on Earth. Yet we speak constantly of land scarcity. The irony is difficult to ignore.

Australia does not suffer from a physical shortage of land. It suffers from a shortage of suitably located, planned, serviced and deliverable residential land - and from an industry that struggles to convert that land into homes quickly enough.

The real shortage is not simply land. It is deliverable housing.

Population growth, household formation and changing living needs have moved faster than the combined capacity of planning systems, infrastructure delivery and residential construction.

The problem is therefore larger than the price of a block of land or the cost of a sheet of plasterboard.

It is a productivity problem.

Imagine if every motor vehicle were built outdoors on a different site, on your driveway for example, by a changing sequence of subcontractors, exposed to rain, heat and supply interruptions, with every vehicle treated as a unique prototype.

The final product would take longer, cost more and vary significantly in quality.

We would never accept that production model from the automotive, aerospace or electronics industries.

Yet it remains normal in housing.

This is not a criticism of tradespeople. Australia has highly capable builders, supervisors and skilled workers. The problem is that we continue asking scarce skilled people to carry an inefficient production process on their shoulders.

Adding more people to an outdated method will not solve the underlying problem. Nor will improving one material at a time.

The residential construction industry would be better served from evolvong from a site-dependent craft process toward a more coordinated, repeatable and productive method of creating shelter.

“On the whole, new houses on offer in the private marketplace are large,

eave-less, brick veneer boxes, which allow little opportunity for natural control of heat gain and loss, with buried internal spaces that lack access to direct natural light and air.

As a consequence, many are fitted with air-conditioning units shortly after occupation. These houses readily achieve five stars because the rating tools we currently use only assess building fabric, not human behavior's nor ongoing energy use – but how are the benefits of the five-star rating reduced once a house

has been air-conditioned?

Well-designed, smaller spaces in a temperate climate

do not require air-conditioning. Through good orientation following

passive solar design principles, they offer high air quality, are cheaper to run and perform better environmentally. Glazing is a significant up-front cost factor, so additional expense for larger windows must be balanced to achieve affordable outcomes, with life-cycle costs considered in the equation. Overall, the benefits of fresh air and controlled solar gain/loss, a sense of spaciousness and the well-being afforded by good access to the outdoor environment are compelling reasons to review the current approach.”

Shelley Penn, Deputy Government Architect in the Office of

the Victorian Government Architect. Circa 2000

That does not mean every home should look the same. Manufacturing does not have to erase architecture, culture or individuality.

The challenge is to standardise what people do not need to see - engineering, connections, production and quality control - while preserving freedom in the places that give a home its identity.

The question is no longer whether housing needs to become more affordable.

The question is whether we are prepared to rethink how housing is produced.

Until residential construction itself becomes more productive, housing will continue to become more expensive, regardless of improvements in individual materials, grants, incentives or short-term programs.

The future of housing will not be solved by one new material, one new regulation or one government acting alone.

It will be solved when architecture, engineering, manufacturing, government and local industry work together to fundamentally rethink the process of creating shelter.

What do you think stands between people and better shelter?

About The Shelter Journal

The Shelter Journal explores housing, resilience, architecture, manufacturing and the future of shelter. Published by Diamond Weave, it is an open invitation to question how we build and how better shelter might be made available to more people.