Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: design

  • Prefabricating change in the construction industry

    Prefabricating change in the construction industry

    One of the industries being dramatically reinvented by China is the construction sector as the nation’s demand on labor and materials puts stresses on the economy.

    An answer local developers and builders have found to these constraints has been to turn to prefabricated construction.

    While prefab building isn’t new, Chinese builders are pushing the techniques of designing, manufacturing and assembling the structures.

    In Changsha, the capital of southern China’s Hunan Province, local construction company Broad Group built a 57-story building using 1200 in 19 days.

    Coupled with large scale 3D printing and computerised design tools, the Chinese builders are redefining the construction industry with methods that are far more efficient and less labor intensive.

    For companies, and countries, that depend upon the construction industry for employment and profit these techniques could be another disruption.

    Again we’re seeing there are few industries immune from major disruption as technology changes business.

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  • Apple Watch shows us the limits of 3D printing and crowdfunding

    Apple Watch shows us the limits of 3D printing and crowdfunding

    Ahead of its launch the Apple watch has been criticised for its price and upmarket focus but the product shows what it costs to manufacture high quality goods along with the limitations of both 3D printing and crowdfunding.

    In its Watch Craftsmanship videos Apple shows off some of the workmanship that goes into manufacturing the device and the Atomic Delights blog has a deep look at the processes and the design decisions behind the company’s choice of techniques.

    What Apple’s series shows is that making top end devices is capital intensive and very, very hard. It also puts lie to the idea that raising a few thousand, or even million, dollars on Kickstarter will get a luxury item to market.

    Greg Koenigin, the author of the Atomic Delights blog, gushes about Apple’s attention to detail and high quality manufacturing.

    I see these videos and I see a process that could only have been created by a team looking to execute on a level far beyond what was necessary or what will be noticed. This isn’t a supply chain, it is a ritual Apple is performing to bring themselves up to the standards necessary to compete against companies with centuries of experience.

    It’s clear Apple isn’t stepping back or making any compromises in making its mark on the watch industry, even though the entire global market for timepieces is less than one quarter’s income from the iPhone.

    At the other end of the market the 3D printing revolution continues with Feetz raising $3 million for its customised shoemaking operation.

    While Feetz is an impressive and quirky business with great promise it shows the rough-and-ready face of the makers’ movement and the businesses relying on 3D printing services, it’s a world away from the Apple Watch.

    While both crowdfunding and 3D printing are going to have a massive effect on business and manufacturing, the truth is that other manufacturing methods are still going to be used by deep pocketed companies. Nothing is ever as simple as we think.

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  • Links of the day – redesigning the car and South China Mall.

    Links of the day – redesigning the car and South China Mall.

    The CES extravaganza continues in Las Vegas with a wave of announcement, most of which I’m ignoring, however the motor industry continues to show off new developments with Mercedes displaying their vision of how a driverless car will look.

    Other interesting links today include an analysis of the ill fated South China Mall’s flaws and how Amazon is reorganising its R&D efforts after the failure of the Amazon Fire.

    Mercedes redesigns the car

    A little while back I suggested that we could do better in redesigning the driverless car – Mercedes have gone ahead and done it.

    Mercedes’ redesign of the driverless car indicates just what can be done when we rethink what passengers will need in the vehicles of the future.

    Ford recalls a vehicle for a UI upgrade

    Ford has recalled its Lincoln MKC SUV models for a software upgrade after discovering drivers were shutting down the cars by accident.

    What’s notable with this story is how software changes are now one of the main reasons for recalling vehicles and how design flaws in an automobile’s computer programs are relatively quickly discovered and resolved.

    We will probably find in the near future car manufacturers will carry out the upgrades remotely rather than ask owners to bring their vehicles into dealerships.

    A long running security flaw is exposed

    In August 2013 a security researcher warned UK online greeting card vendor Moonpig that its system exposed up to six million users’ account and financial details. Until Monday the company had ignored him. This is a tale of classic management disregard for customer security and one area where business culture needs to dramatically change.

    Rumours of an AOL – Verizon merger

    It’s a speculative story but if a merger between US telco Verizon and former internet giant AOL goes ahead it may mark another wave of telcos moving into content services, although it’s hard not to think that Verizon could spend its money more wisely.

    After a flop, Amazon restructures its R&D

    The Amazon Fire was by all measures a miserable flop as a smartphone however it seems the company learned some important lessons from the device’s market failures. Instead of abandoning its research efforts, the online behemoth is increasing it’s R&D budget and reorganising its development division.

    Design fails of the South China Mall

    South China Mall just south of Guangzhou has been the poster child of Chinese malinvestment during the nation’s current boom. In a blog post from 2011, a shopping mall expert visits the development and points out the major design faults in the complex which may well have doomed the project from the beginning.

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  • 3D Printing promises to change architecture and building

    3D Printing promises to change architecture and building

    One of the longest running large scale 3D printing projects is based at the UK’s Loughborough University where since 2007 researchers have been working on developing the technology’s applications to the construction industry.

    Loughborough’s technology, named Freeform, offers faster and more flexible ways of casting concrete and building structures using a computer controlled concrete pouring system. For property developers the attraction is cheaper buildings while for architects the technologies offer more innovative structures.

    In late November the team announced a venture with Swedish building company Skanska SA to develop the world’s first commercial concrete printing robot.

    The venture, which will include collaborations with companies including iconic UK architects Foster and Partners, Buchan Concrete, Scandinavian contracting giant ABB and Lafarge Tarmac, aims to have the first commercially available robot printer available by mid 2016.

    Competing with the European venture is Chinese company WinSun who earlier this year showcased its 3D printer capable of producing ten houses every 24 hours. An interesting aspect of WinSun’s project is that the printing rig was build out of existing parts and controlled by an off the shelf Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing software system.

    While the Chinese results are relatively crude, they show the potential for the technology. The economics of the WinSun project are enhanced by using waste building site material for the concrete which only increases the attraction of these machines to cost conscious property developers.

    The Chinese and British are not just the only countries working on these technologies, in the Netherlands the 3D Print Canal House shows how techniques and materials are being developed while in the United States the University of Southern California’s Contour Crafting project is looking at how to use large scale 3D printing in a range of construction scenarios including building space colonies.

    While using moon dust to build structures in space is some way off, both Freeform and WinSun show what will become commonplace on building sites in the near future.

    These technologies promise to radically change architecture and the building industry with ramifications for jobs and the economics of building structures.  3D printing buildings is another example of how industries and employment will be very different by the middle of this century.

    For businesses, it’s another example of how managers have to prepare for very different marketplaces.

    Builder image courtesy of thesaint through Freemimages.com

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  • Navigating a platform shift

    Navigating a platform shift

    One of the companies that defined the desktop computing revolution in the 1990s was Autodesk.

    The company’s AutoCAD program bought Computer Aided Design to the masses and probably was the single main reason for the extinction of the drawing board in design offices.

    In the post-PC world Autodesk itself is having to deal with a dramatically changed market as software moves onto the cloud, workplaces become more collaborative and the computing world becomes based upon mobile devices rather than static desktop computers.

    As Autodesk’s Asia Pacific Senior Vice President, Pat Williams, described at the Autodesk University Extension in Sydney today there are three major disruptions happening to industry in general; to production, consumption and connections.

    Disrupting design

    “Technology and expectations are empowering users and disrupting how things are made,” Williams told the audience as he demonstrated Autodesk’s range of design, simulation and rendering tools that the company hopes will keep it ahead of a rapidly changing marketplace.

    “How we make things and bring them to market is changing,” says Williams. “We simply don’t design, manufacture or even imagine the as-built environment as we have in the past.”

    “The other thing that’s changing is how we connect and share ideas, which changes the way we create. No longer is the lone designer a reality we can live with any more.”

    Along with connections between workers changing production and consumers sharing their experiences creating new consumption patterns, Williams also sees the connectivity between devices and materials as changing the way things are designed and manufactured.

    “The way things connect with each other interconnect and relate is deeper than ever before. It’s getting easier to create complex systems that talk to each other and the design and physical use depends upon their interconnectivity.”

    Williams echoes the ideas of designer Gadi Amit and materials engineer Skylar Tibbits on how smart materials are going to change manufacturing and design.

    3D printing drives change

    One of the big drivers of change in the design industry is 3D printing that allows both more complex components to be manufactured and will change some industries — most notably the construction industry as bricklaying, concrete pouring and formwork can be done by large scale printing.

    Given the influence of the 3D printing, it’s not surprising that Autodesk have launched a hundred million dollar investment fund to help startups leverage the new technologies.

    As one of the companies that benefited from the desktop PC revolution, Autodesk are finding themselves having to adapt to a very different marketplace. Their cloud based products will need to be nimble to succeed to in a very demanding and volatile marketplace.

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