Construction is vital both to Gross Domestic Product and to today's politics. Prime Minister Tony Blair himself chairs a cabinet committee on the Thames Gateway development, to the east of London. Housing has proved a big factor in Chancellor Gordon Brown’s worries about the Euro. But the construction sector is one of the world’s weakest in innovation. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott’s target of just 4000 homes to be made through prefabrication shows how building remains a 19th century affair, not a 21st century one.

Drawing on the latest technologies that have emerged both inside and outside the sector, Why is construction so backward? forms a detailed, practical alternative to the conventional wisdom in building design and urban planning. It is a powerful call for reform, and a sharp polemic against architecture as social engineering and environmentalist dogma.

• Contains a foreword by Martin Pawley
• Includes contributions from such high profile figures as Stefan Muthesius and Miles Glendinning

Author: James Woudhuysen and Ian Abley

Publisher: Academy Press

Format: Paperback

Pages: 321

ISBN: 9780470852897

Publication Date: 4 February 2004