I wonder if one day we will build homes like we do the space station—in prefabricated modules. Modular construction seems like it could offer incredible advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps rooms can be built in standard dimensions and standard interconnections to adjacent rooms for electricity, networking, coaxial cable, HVAC, hot and cold water, natural gas, etc. Each room would be somewhat over-engineered, but this extra cost is offset by savings from the economies of scale due to mass-production. A home builder would simply assemble a chosen configuration of modules, and provide some finishing touches, such as the exterior facing, roofing, and utility hookups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This approach would benefit from guaranteed quality of workmanship, replacing skilled labor (e.g., carpenters) with robots and 3D printing, and rapid construction. Moreover, the big innovation comes years later. As technology improves, and the homeowner wants to uptake improvements, it becomes a simple matter of replacing modules, and possibly reassembling them in a different configuration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wonder if one day we will build homes like we do the space station—in prefabricated modules. Modular construction seems like it could offer incredible advantages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-innovation","tag-engineering"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t