Machine-Grown Housing

Eric Harris-Braun writes "Over at Wired, Bruce Sterling has a story about a new way of looking at architecture and building. In fact, computer sculpting of housing is already being done, and non-planned building as an architectural philosphy, is as old as we are, as you can read in The Hand Sculpted House."

Comments

there's a reason for safety regs

[j1bb3rj4bb3r]

This tactic allows him to avoid hidebound European safety regulations when he proposes, for instance, a steel footbridge whose design, sketched using industry-standard CAD software, has been radically distorted by a computer virus. Ask Europeans to cross a buggy footbridge and they'll balk, quail, and consult the 80,000 regulatory pages of the EU's acquis communautaire. Tell them it's art, and they'll flock to it in droves, sit on it, and drink Beaujolais nouveau.

And when it collapses under the weight of that flock...

wtf... this dude is nuts.

Re:I like the idea of unplanned housing

[10000000000000000000]

Another example of utilitarian design being not the best method would be the early Intersates in the US.

At first they were built as vast point-to-point straight lines miles and miles long.

This design led to very boring drives, and consequently people fell asleep at the wheel.

Modern highways the world over tend to have gradually sweeping or rising and descending layouts as a result of this.