Katerra’s global vision of reforming the world of construction, using billions of dollars in investment to build a completely new production system from the ground up, showed a stereotypical arrogance of Silicon Valley. It has also had a fraction of the impact of European models looking to adapt using a simple, straightforward and standard set of parts.
The company shared a common blind spot with many American technologists, according to Gerard McCaughey, a serial entrepreneur and founder of Century Homes, an Irish pioneer of off-site construction: he ignored pioneering innovation abroad. While American construction favored the construction of the wooden structure on site with readily available raw materials (imagine a two-by-four stacked Ford truck pulling up a lot), builders with more space and limited material in Asia and Europe they have perfected the prefabricated and modular techniques. Katerra ignored these examples, which slowly gained experience by focusing on specific sectors one at a time. Instead, he tried to reinvent the wheel, incorporating all facets of the complex home construction process and building too many different models at once and causing a massive overcharge.
“It’s not what you know or what you don’t know that catches you,” says McCaughey, who held talks with Katerra leaders. “It simply came to our notice then [they were wrong]. Out of place is not a one-trick pony. You have to crawl before you can walk. The less experienced man in my business knew more about off-site construction than his senior leadership. ”
Many efforts are being made to decarbonize buildings. An example is the Holistic Energy and Architectural Retrofit Toolkit (HEART), a cloud-based computing platform that includes decision-making and energy management features.
MEREDITH MIOTKE
The Energiesprong model, which has refurbished thousands of homes in the Netherlands and across Europe, is based on Stroomversnelling (the name means “rapid acceleration”), a network in which contractors, housing associations, parts suppliers and even financiers work in close contact. a level of coordination that not even Katerra’s expansive system matches. Right now, the Energiesprong system can rebuild a building in about 10 days. Other emerging companies and builders offer free upgrades: Dutch company Factory Zero, for example, makes pre-built modules for roofs with electric boilers, heat pumps and solar connections. The greening of an old building is almost pluggable.
It is part of a broader European model that begins with an ambitious emissions policy and supports it with incentives and funding for modernization and new buildings through programs such as Horizon Europe, in fact subsidizing new construction methods and creating a market. for innovative windows, doors and air conditioning. systems. A key component of its success has been the willingness of governments to fund these improvements to public and subsidized housing, usually post-war towers and townhouses with a desperate need for improvement. But there are also other important advantages in Europe: building codes are much more standardized between countries and the continent as a whole, including some progressive regulations that drive passive house standard, an ultra-efficient level of insulation and ventilation that drastically reduces the energy required for heating and cooling. The entire housing ecosystem is also smaller and more standardized, making it easier to support more experiments. Energiesprong uses a single building model, a handful of contractors, and a relatively small group of players in a small area.
Coordination would be exponentially more difficult in a single U.S. city, let alone nationwide. “Europe takes a shotgun approach and funds numerous programs at all levels,” says Michael Eliason, a Seattle-based sustainable construction expert and founder of Larch Lab, a design studio and think tank. It is an approach that distributes risk among different ideas, rather than concentrating venture capital on a handful of determined hypergrowth startups. “The United States ends up being a kind of sniper rifle,” he says. “Katerra fails and affects the entire prefabricated construction industry.”
An emerging model in Canada aims to replicate that of Europe. CityHousing Hamilton, the Ontario City Housing Authority, recently used national housing funds for a complete overhaul of the Ken Soble Tower, an oceanfront skyscraper built in 1967 and that it had fallen into disrepair. The project, which incorporated a paneled exterior cladding, new high-efficiency windows and electrification of heating and gas stoves, brought the building to the passive house standard; with a 94% reduction in energy consumption thanks to extreme efficiency, the total energy required to cool and heat a unit is equivalent to three incandescent bulbs. The new seating windows, panoramic views and natural light suggest that there was no aesthetic price to pay.
Graeme Stewart of ERA Architects, who led the project and has studied hundreds of similar mid-century skyscrapers in the country, says the project gave business to Canadian companies that make high-tech windows and siding, suggesting that this work could help sow a national industry for more green building projects. He has even led the creation of the Tower Renovation Association, an organization dedicated to pursuing similar modernizations across Canada. But CityHousing Hamilton development manager Sean Botham says that even with all the benefits they are seeing for tower residents: better air quality, infection control, mental health and cognitive function, and “views you just don’t get on social media”. housing ”: the agency is unlikely to pay the 8% cost premium to upgrade other buildings in its portfolio without further financial support.
