Revolution in Building Products on Way, Research Experts Say

D) EVOLUTIONARY changes in building materials and I\ components and in public concepts of housing and home decor may be expected in the next 15 to 20 years, declared building research experts meeting in lAlallingford,' Connecticut in late May.

These changes will be brought about by adaptation of a "tremendous backlog of scientific and technological knowledge" to building product research, which will :

(1) Lower relative costs in home construction;

(2) Give homeowners new dimensions in quality, serviceability, and comfort;

(3) Make feasible increased prefabrication, and especially prefabrication of module units and components; and

(4) Make practical many advanced types of innovations, such as paneling which heats, cools, or emits light, or nails that "grow" to the wood in which they are orlven.

Speaking at the Quantum Symposium on "New Materials for the Building and Construction Industry," both Dr. Clyde Williams, president of Clyde Williams and Company, Columbus, Ohio, and Dr. C. M. Doede, president of Quantum, Inc., Wallingford researcl-r laboratory, stressed that there is a vast reservoir of scientific knowledge that is applicable to building materials development. Much of this knowledge has been generated in governmental research and merely needs imaginative adaptation to cotnmercial products to set off a series of revolutionary changes in the building industry.

Both research leaders stated that the k.y to rapicl progress in the building industry is in the cross-fertilization or "wedding" of technologies. This means taking ideas from one science and matcl-ring them up with ideas from another to create novel solutions to oroblems.

"The most important ideas for new products-whether they be metal, wood, ceramics, plastics, or glass," Dr. Williams stated, "will likely come from technologies having no apparent relation to the industry in question." As a simplified example, he cited the age-old problem of developing better holding power in the common nail and said that the solution to this might well come from organic chemistry, where knowledge of the cross-linking of molecules might enable the production of nails that would gradually combine molecularly with wood fibers.

Dr. Williams told representatives of the building materials industry assembled for the symposium that "it is much too dangerous to depend upon innovation alone in your present line of products to sustain your business into the indefinite future. Whole lines of products can be made obsolete by some breakthrough on the part of your competitor. The building industry has been one of the most stable in respect to product obsolescence, but it is now showing evidence of an accelerated rate of change," he said.

Dr. Doede stated that application of existing scientific knowledge to building materials and products should enable the reduction of on-site labor costs and give the home buyer a better house for his money. He pictured a continuing series of "small increments" in building progress and cost reduction through the development of prefabricated assemblies and through ingeniously devised joining methods. To illustrate how ideas from remote technologies lead to improvements in building products, he cited Quantum's work in the development of "slippery" rubber as a possible valve stem packing for plumbing systems and as a possible weatherseal for windows and doors. This development, he said, resulted directly from work the laboratory had conducted on materials for missiles and the X-15 rocket ship.

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