It is difficult to build utopian housing in a non-utopian world. Many of the mid-century attempts at reinventing housing on an industrial scale eventually foundered. Building codes are highly localized, posing a challenge for mass production—a design that works in one place might not be permitted in another. And, though people may love hearing about new kinds of houses, they don’t always want to inhabit them. Buckminster Fuller’s own geodesic house leaked, and his wife wasn’t sure how to hang pictures on the slanted walls.
Behrokh Khoshnevis, the engineer who pioneered 3-D-printed construction, has become jaded about the technology’s potential. “All the hype is not warranted,” he told me. When I asked him about his tedx talk from a decade ago, he sounded wistful. “I was very optimistic,” he said. Khoshnevis never succeeded at taking the technology mainstream. “I’m glad I started kind of a movement,” he said. “And I’d like it to succeed. I think it will, but it’s going to take time, and it’s not going to be at the scale I envisioned originally—it’s not going to be most buildings.” He’d come to believe that the construction industry was not ready for a total disruption. The experience seemed to have made him philosophical. “The best thing is reality, knowing the reality, not living in fantasy,” he said. “Understanding reality is as good of an achievement as materializing the fantasy that you have.”