Building technologies do need to evolve, but this ain't it.
Starting with the tagline "Simple, beautiful zero-carbon building for everyone". WHAT?
- Claiming that timber building products are carbon neutral is dubious, just talking about the timber alone, before any value added lifecycle. They should put some pictures of the Spruce forests their plywood comes from and let people decide for themselves.
- Simple? Not really. They don't say much at all about what happens after you get walls and a roof. Who is going to plumb and wire, and how? How simple will it be to find a tradesperson who wants to actually figure out from scratch how to pull cable through your ikea home and put their license on the line?
- Beautiful? Meh.. ask again in 30 years and see if people don't say it looks like it was built in 2023.
And then just all the stuff that doesn't matter. The problem of making a building isn't putting up walls and a roof. That's usually the part that goes the fastest. Who cares that it's 'precision engineered' (spoiler alert, if it's OSB, theres no precision) and that it has 3x more compressive strength than stick frame. When was the last time you thought to yourself 'I wish I could put a car on my roof'?
Demand on timber causes manufacturers to go buy it from areas like Amazonia or Siberia, in both deforestation is now a serious problem. And it still requires a lot of energy to be spent on cutting and transportation.
Starting with the tagline "Simple, beautiful zero-carbon building for everyone". WHAT? - Claiming that timber building products are carbon neutral is dubious, just talking about the timber alone, before any value added lifecycle. They should put some pictures of the Spruce forests their plywood comes from and let people decide for themselves. - Simple? Not really. They don't say much at all about what happens after you get walls and a roof. Who is going to plumb and wire, and how? How simple will it be to find a tradesperson who wants to actually figure out from scratch how to pull cable through your ikea home and put their license on the line? - Beautiful? Meh.. ask again in 30 years and see if people don't say it looks like it was built in 2023.
And then just all the stuff that doesn't matter. The problem of making a building isn't putting up walls and a roof. That's usually the part that goes the fastest. Who cares that it's 'precision engineered' (spoiler alert, if it's OSB, theres no precision) and that it has 3x more compressive strength than stick frame. When was the last time you thought to yourself 'I wish I could put a car on my roof'?