The visualization problem in construction
This is a hard one! Although seems to have been resolved by the gaming industry. Construction companies that can afford it, hopefully are using this super-power. If your not a company or an individual in the big leagues, this is probably an energy drain to even think about. Let alone, that an accessible technology would be super useful if we could figure out how to employee it at every level and every price point.
Wind time backwards- the construction industry must have started off with some form of representation right? First you’ve got to understand the thing you want to build, then use your feet & hands to build it. If you have the skill to build it, then the whole idea, every step to march through from start to finish could possibly live in your head or be made-up on the spot given your understanding of the subject, it’s design, use, etc.
You saw a river and some how understood that transferring the water pressure in other directions by using the river’s natural tendencies could supply needed water to crops further away from the river. If you wanted to cross the river, you thought of ways to build something that went horizontally over the river but not touch the water. You; an individual got to work at somehow structuring material, found around you to fit the design. This was probably a very small bridge and there were definitely limits on how big and reliable your construction could be, before you ran out of motivation or found other ways of crossing rivers.
If you really wanted to produce something useful that stood the test of time no matter how finite, you needed more people. You needed help is various forms. From the invention of money, myriad construction tools, material technology, the invention and refinement of language- to be spoken, written and understood by a diverse population. Now, you have to place your idea (at this point probably not generated by 1 person alone) on something that can be seen and worked on by various people from different disciplines. Interpretation is key, which opens the door to perspective and all the problems it causes on a construction site. Be it ancient or a modern one. This is the problem we are working on, the visualization problem. How can we have an idea that can live in all the human minds working on the project? With high fidelity.
The Neville Bonner bridge, under construction in Brisbane city, Australia. June 2024.
The Neville Bonner bridge, under construction in Brisbane city, Australia. There was a past to this project that existed only in imagination.
In my view, this is a not so much a problem to be rid of but a problem to make friends with, working on this problem has revealed an immense amount about my own mind and what it means to have a perspective. The problem might be a reflection of our evolution and the perspective it offers to us as a species. Unique to us, this is only our perspective and not the truth that is out there. Each of us has a unique perspective and also a shared view, species wide. Distinguishing between these 2 modes from the sea of modes is hard but necessary, in order for us to make better and broader strides in this special field of building and construction.
- AT IT’S CORE -
We should all take a minute to recognize the construction we take for granted. It’s all around us, glass, steel concrete, industry grade plastics and the bodies of living creatures (trees) that lived a 100 lives before us. We are builders, we live in buildings, we connect through buildings we dream in buildings. You are either in or out of cities and either far from a constructed location or in one. Your very location on this planet is referenced by it. With construction being on the scale that it is, the problems that need to be solved are scary. What would be the point of solving the visualization problem if we can’t make working in construction better for the highly deprived people that are enslaved by the griding wheels of industry. Time to also take a minute to realize what the construction industry is.
The construction industry, from de-forestation, hydro-energy dam construction, concrete production, road, railways, glass, steel and timber. Is industry!
Every industry is enabled by the construction industry. This is the largest contributor of green house gas emissions, largest employer of slave labour and probably the largest employer of people that hate working in the space. I consider myself lucky and sadden by the sate of workers globally. The industry’s wheels must turn at the cost of human blood. I urge you reader to dive deeper into this sorry state of the industry giant, but the problem is too big, very ugly and unstoppable. The best we can do, is the best that must be done to help the industry run on less blood, less hours and perhaps less human effort.
WHAT CAN WE DO TO ACHIEVE THIS TODAY -
WHERE IS MY HOLODECK -
