Sir, If David Cameron’s ambition to build 200,000 new homes is to be realised (News, Mar 2), then housebuilding with labour-intensive craft-based masonry and timber construction will need radical revision. Britain has a respected architectural profession and an equally impressive car industry. Surely the collaboration of talented architects and skilled production engineers could transform the design and mass production of low-cost housing. Britain’s highly acclaimed postwar “prefab” housing programme borrowed techniques from wartime aircraft production. Current production engineering with its inherent range of choices, allied to progressive housing design, could solve our housing crisis.
Professor Emeritus A Peter Fawcett
Sheffield