Masdar city is somewhat of a failure. Wonder why most articles are from before 2011?
Yeah.
The automated subterranean transit system was scrapped and never implemented, the other sectors of the city originally planned for construction have been cancelled, and that which was built is largely unutilized. Because, of course, you can't build a city in the middle of nowhere and expect academics from the whole world to suddenly want to live there in the desert. More oil king unrealistic projects.
Reality Hits Masdar
Now, don't misunderstand me, the concept and technical realisation of the master plan and buildings by Foster + Partners is truly first-class (as usual). It is the economic-social unfeasibility that sucked, like in most techno-utopian attempts at insta-solving complex issues.
Which leads to the other issue.
3D printing of houses is, by itself, a great concept. Yet the tech just isn't there yet. I am sick of people announcing left and right the "first" 3d printed "house" for the 15th time without actually showing nothing but an extremely crude prototype runs lacking all sorts of essential things. So, some chinese can prefab with a printer some concrete modules to make a tiny $5000 tunnel (not a house)?
Big fucking deal. Concrete prefab has a 100 year old history, and if you're gonna pump out the same pieces all the time you can just make a damn mould instead of using a printer (just like most gimmicky hobbyist 3d printer users). Besides, concrete has SERIOUS temperature issues, and I see no insulation there. Presumably the plumbing and wiring utilises the voids, but doesn't seem to make it any easier to install over traditional masonry structures. And oh the humidity.
For this scale of construction it would be equally if not cheaper, and much more effective, to use a steel stick frame with thin fibreglass-reinforced concrete panels and insulation layers. Or simpler still, structural insulated panels. The only possible advantage of the printed system could be speed, but then again, it's a difference of maybe 2 or 3 days, which is negligible.
Prefabricated steel and concrete systems have been developed and used since the late 19th century, and repeatedly ignored by mostly everyone, because of cultural inertia and general stupidity. To presume such a solution can solve the so-called "third" world's housing crisis is naïve and ignorant of the failures of urbanism in the last century and the actual origin of the housing crisis.
It is not, and never has been, a technical problem. One can build a sturdy and reasonably comfortable house out of nearly anything at hand, as it has been done for centuries before our technology-obsessed era. The housing problem is fundamentally a land-ownership, zoning, density problem, a public policy problem, and at its core a socio-economic problem.
The single-family detached house will
never be the solution to the housing crisis; such a scheme exacerbates the land-density conflict, and is wasteful of resources. Such was already obvious to the modern architects of the early 1900s.
Well planned medium and high density mixed-use complexes are theoretically, and have historically been, the most effective. If you want to look at successful social-housing schemes, perhaps one could look to the policies and infrastructure projects involved in the mid-century British
Council Housing system, the Mexican
Centros Urbanos of the same era, or the Swedish
Miljonprogrammet, or
German,
Austrian, Dutch, and French, to name but a few.
Technology is cool, but let's not deceive ourselves into thinking it will solve our social issues.
