Andrew Bannister

Every housing system on earth has one. No regulator publishes it. Everyone who has lived below it knows exactly where it is. Above the line, a home keeps out the weather, keeps the family safe, gives a child a place to study, and stays put from one year to the next. Below it, none of that can be relied upon — and everything else in life gets harder as a result. What sits on the line is not complicated: → Shelter that holds, for decades not seasons → Safety, and a door that locks → Water,...

Yes. It already has been, on four continents. The question is why we are still arguing about it. Industrialisation is not a factory. That one misunderstanding has burned more money than any technical failure. A factory is one part of a chain running from land and brief through funding, design, manufacture, assembly, handover and maintenance. Bolt a factory onto an unchanged process and you have an expensive shed with one customer. Why it is so slow → A bank will lend against a half-built...

The Two Levers Nobody Pulls Together Andrew J Bannister, Founder, GUILD of MMC We keep arguing about house prices as if they were one number. They aren't. A house price is two costs bolted together — the cost of the building, and the cost of the ground it stands on. Attack one and you shave a few percent. Attack both and the arithmetic changes completely. Lever one: MMC and modular take out the build cost. Factory production replaces weather, waste and waiting with a controlled line. On our...