Future Here Now: Why are we constructing buildings the old way, again?

Sometimes it takes a really, really long time for a Fusion Era innovation to come into its own. 

In the 1950s, my grandfather was one of a small group of mid-century innovators who wanted to apply industrial technology to the ancient craft of building homes.  Only a couple of his modular houses were ever constructed – my guess is that the complexities of shipping wall-sized panels dragged it down.  

And the fact that several modular housing start-ups in that era died young as well probably tells us that availability of materials, labor, and the other components of building a house weren’t scarce enough for people to venture away from the inefficient but well-known house construction methods – what we sometimes call stick-built.  Houses and a lot of buildings are still built that way today. 

But fast forward 70 years, into the opening decades of the Fusion Era.  Climates worldwide are becoming more unpredictable, and metropolitan areas of all types are at more risk than ever from flood,…