Revolutionizing the Building Process With Machine Interfaces

Property technology firm Gropyus aims to revolutionize the housing industry by treating housing as a product and overhauling the entire process, from pre-design to management, with machine-to-machine interfaces that reduce the traditional role of architects. The company manufactures panelized, flat-packed, timber-framed housing in its own cells with an automated process capable of generating 3,500 units per year, according to Forbes. 

In a recent project, Gropyus completed a nine-story building with 54 units in just 11 weeks. And while its construction costs are equal to conventional construction, the company’s end product is an energy-positive building that operates at a lower cost.

With about 400 employees at Gropyus, about one-third are software engineers working on parametric design to replace the traditional role of the architect. Those precise designs inform the building system and the manufacturing line and the billing system, building the entire value chain into a turnkey solution for affordable housing.

“We still believe in machine-to-people interfaces, and we should think about machine-to-machine interfaces,” [Bernd Oswald] said. “Machine-to-human interface might be what we need in our mind to believe and trust in a process, but it doesn’t add any value. We still have people reviewing drawings, but a machine could do that at equal quality and faster.”

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