Monica Reading Response 007: Retooling for Mass Markets

                Tom Verebes, an Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong, speculates about the use of robots in construction in his article, “Retooling for Mass Markets in the 21^st Century”. The title of his piece responds to a quote by Thomas Kuhn, which states that retooling in manufacture is an extravagance only necessary when a crisis demands it. Verebes argues that this crisis is found today in China, where 10 million new urban inhabitants require housing each year.

                Because of the urgent need for housing in China in what the author calls “The Asian Century”, standardized building types are created for efficiency’s sake. The approach to building threatens to turn Chinese cities into homogeneous environments reminiscent of Modernist planning ideals. Robotic fabrication is a possible solution for creating customized and unique cities, rather than systematic, mass-produced ones.

                Research in robotic fabrication has been happening in elite architecture schools for some time now, and these techniques have recently been adopted by some entrepreneurs. However, although the technology is available and can be applied at different scales, there are still many hurdles to overcome before robots are used in the typical construction process. From a standpoint that considers only time and money, it is impractical to change the current construction tools and move robotic fabrication into the construction site. Instead of this, robots should be used in conjunction with existing building technologies, not just to save time and create efficient buildings, but also to create unique, beautiful, and non-standardized cities for the world’s growing urban population.