CANADIAN BUILDING INDUSTRY --- FALLING BEHIND? 

Where is the Canadian construction industry headed? The developments in Japan alone are shocking. One Japanese construction company has probably spent more on research and development in residential construction during the last decade than has the entire Canadian residential building industry during the last century. In commercial and industrial construction, other Japanese and Asian companies have been taking similar steps.

The Misawa Corporation, the largest home-builder in the world, with well over 350,000 built the old way, are now producing ceramic homes -- in Forty minutes -- at their Nagoya plant. These homes are guaranteed for twenty years, require no fire insurance for the building and have technologies and research findings, unknown in the west, incorporated into such buildings. To put it simply, sand (silicon and limestone) goes in one end of the production plant and a house comes out the other. On-site erection time is around 2.5 hours. The three-storey houses run from 1200 to 1800 sq. ft.

Perhaps even more importantly they have conquered "economies of scope". Not the economies of scale known in the fast-fading industrial age where you can make 10,000 identical homes cheaper than 10, but a process that permits the construction of 10,000 DIFFERENT homes at almost the same price per house, as it costs to produce 10 identical homes! It's all in the computer software and the fivestory production building. Refrigerators in these homes are still in the kitchen but the irritating hum of the motor has been removed -and placed in the garage, where the heat from the motor keeps the car warm. Other features include fibre-optic cabling for the home computer system and sensors that exchange shower humidity for cooler, dryer outside air when required. What are Canadian construction companies going to do to compete?

In the commercial construction of hotels, office buildings and apartments another astonishing development has been created this year by the Ohbayashi Corporation of Osaka, Japan.

They build the first floor of such buildings - and then that floor (a "robot" in reality) -- builds the rest of the structure! The only humans constantly involved in the actual building process are those in the "control tower" monitoring computer operations -- operations that continue 24 hours a day, every day of the year, uninterrupted by labor or weather problems. Think of the dramatic savings in "bridging" costs alone. Will you be able to compete?

Another development that will shock construction contractors who specialize in ski resorts is the new "Urban Slalom" operations of Tokyo's avant-garde designer Kazunobo Abe, Chief Architect for the Kajima Corporation. He is building downtown "mountains", wrapping a building around them and providing 24-hour-a-day, year-round skiing. Mondays you can ski "on the moon", Tuesdays "over Manhattan" and Wednesdays "through a coconut plantation" -- all made possible with holographic-like visual projections. Skiing is as convenient as playing tennis -- downtown after work! How can you, and conventional ski resorts survive against this type of thinking?

In another advanced development, the La Foret Engineering and Information Service Company of Tokyo has already provided 75 installations worldwide (most in Japan) with their "Himiwari" (Japanese for "sunflower") type of zero-voltage interior illumination system.

They have erected satellite-like rotating dishes that each contain a packed cluster of Fresnel lenses. These dishes with their lenses follow the movement of the sun, collecting and intensifying sunlight and feeding it, via fibre-optic cables, to building interiors. Along the way they subject the light to a "light-shift", removing the harmful ultra-violet rays and converting the infra-red to heat if desired, and bringing only "pure" sunlight to the people and plants in building interiors. Cheaper cabling, lower insurance, much longer cable runs without power boosters, a cleaner maintainance-free installation and no risk of short circuits. Is there one Canadian building taking advantage of this technologically superior system?

When land is cheap -- five to ten million dollars an acre -- it obviously is less costly to build on the surface. But when times, technology, currency rates and land costs change, it becomes cheaper to build underground. Japan is moving into this field fast. Underground living has advantages we may have never considered. Once built, such construction doesn't require further heating. The heat that human bodies and their activity create will rise, be filtered and sold as heat to old-fashioned buildings above ground.

Large atriums in such complex's will eliminate feelings of claustrophobia and even apartments and condos facing the "cave" wall will be able to select various "views" of holographic-like "visions" of Niagara Falls, the Serengeti Plains or the Statue of Buddha at Kamakora. It is also safer to live underground in earthquake-prone areas. And that is why the Taisei Corporation have set up their "Underground Space Development Office". This is another extension of Japan's continuing look at underground tunnels under cities (now underway) and long railroads under the ocean (already completed).

As Japan leads the world into such unusual construction projects who else, when the Japanese start completing such developments, will have the know-how, experience and developed technology to replicate such projects elsewhere in the world?

For millennia, countries and their people have moved pretty slowly. In recent decades the speed of change on the global economic totem pole has been accelerating exponentially. For the past 150 years the citizens of Europe and North America benefitted most from the industrial revolution and its ability to increase the wealth of the world 30-fold. When we moved into new areas in the industrial age, we had most of the know-how, the marbles and the ability to finance such developments. At the end of World War II Canada was the third industrial nation in the world. Today we are somewhere between 12th and 16th, depending on measuring criteria. Other countries, slower in the past, failed to see the change that the mechanical technology of that day would bring, and fell behind.

When current indications suggest that new technologies will increase the wealth of the world another 100 times, not only the rules have changed but the game itself. We still think its baseball, but it's now jai-alai and most Canadians can't even spell it let alone play it. If we don't move faster we may find ourselves not only descending the economic totem pole to a much lower status, but accelerating our drop in that direction.

The construction industry should be a part of the solution to try and avoid such a fate, not contribute to it.

Are you aware of British window glazing that helps foil economic espionage? Or what is being done in anticipation of the 'greenhouse effect? What about those profitable "car condos" in America, or the "humane" Thai bank building built in His image, a robot? Not to mention Ohbayashi Corporation's proposed 500-storey (three times the height of the CN Tower in Toronto) building for Japan; the Tron house (eventually to be a large city) that contains 10,000 computers; or plans for floating office towers and the "Tomb Wall".

Have you learned how to assimilate knowledge fast, now that it is doubling at the rate of 100 percent every 18 months? More information: Ceramic Homes: MISAWA HOMES LTD., 2-4-1- NISHI-SHINJUKU-KU TOKYO 163, JAPAN

Building Robot: HIROSHI TERAOKU, GENERAL MANAGER SPACE PROJECT OFFICE, OHBAYASHI CORP. 3-2-CHOME, KANDA TSUKASA-CHO CHIYODA-KU, TOKYO, JAPAN PHONE: (03) 292-1111. TELEX: (222) 4091 Urban Slalom: KAZUNOBO ABE, CHIEF ARCHITECT KAJIMA CORPORATION, 5-30, AKASAKA 6-CHOME, MINATO-KU, TOKYO 107, JAPAN

Himiwari Lighting: PETER SEIKMEIR LA FORET ENGINEERING & INFORMATION SERVICE CO. LTD HIMAWARI BLDG. 7-8, 2-CHOME, TORANOMON, MINATO-KU TOKYO 105, JAPAN. PHONE: (03) 593-0091.

Underground City Project: TETSUYA HANAMURA, CHIEF ALICE CITY PROJECT UNDERGROUND SPACE DEVELOPMENT OFFICE TAISEI CORPORATION 25-1, NISHI-SHINJUKU 1 CHOME SHINJUKU-KU, TOKYO 163, JAPAN PHONE: TOKYO (03) 348-1111 FAX : (03) 343-4046

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