Thoughts on innovation, the Model T, and zHome

November 19th, 2008 - Posted By: Brad Liljequist

Think about just about any industry – telecommunications, computers, aerospace, heck, even automotive – and the list of innovation and progress over the last 100 years is long.  Think about where all those industries were 100 years ago – the state of the art for those industries were:

• -crank telephones through a community switchboard
• -mechanical adding machine
• -the very earliest airplanes (Wright Bros. flight was in 1903)
• -Ford Model T (prototype 1908)

How many of those pieces of technology are actually in use today, without massive improvements?

Then consider housing.  The history of innovation in housing over the last century and a half is short, and a lot of it happened a LONG time ago:

• 1833    Stick framing invented
• 1920s  Beginnings of widespread home electrification
• 1930s  Forced air furnaces introduced
• 1940s  Basic insulation mandated by code
• 1970s  Double paned windows become standard

 

The house we live in was built in 1925.  Its tiny garage is sized to fit a Model T (or, a Smart Car!).  When I look at our house and compare it to a new one, it’s not all that different – the rooms are smaller, there was no insulation in the walls until five years ago, at some point along the way the coal burning stove was replaced with forced air, and it has single paned windows.  But really, that’s it. 

I don’t think that an “innovation is a priori good” stance is a reasonable, don’t get me wrong.  Thinking about Christopher Alexander’s A Timeless Way of Building, I think there’s a strong case to be made that the materials and methods that stand the test of time are a good way to go.  Heck, even in zHome we are making the case – particularly in the world of materials – where we are even harkening back thousands of years and finishing some walls in clay. 

For me the core issue is that we think about what we’re doing.  To me the home is the lowest hanging fruit of potential environmental innovation.   Homes are so core to who we are, and their share of our environmental footprint is so big, that a concerted reevaluation of what home is seems in order.  Through that process, I think we’re likely to find that some of the answers lie far in the past, and others in the untapped future.

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