Conclusion

For a great many construction specialists the mantra "Build 4.0" is understood as the sector's tipping point into the digital age. We're talking about robotics, digitalization, automation and off-site manufacturing. Overall, this would be the advent of a high-tech activity that would make it a sector finally stripped of its improvised character and having acquired the recognized status of a mature industry. In a way, it would be the advent of technology finally under control.

And yet, this vision is reminiscent of the dashed hopes of past attempts to industrialize an ancestral profession. On the other hand, advocates of a gentle transition and a return to the local, organized around self-building and participation see it as the expression of an illusory, if not dangerous, technicist utopia - that of a belief in continuous, life-saving technical progress....