Subscribe
Sign in
Home
Essays
Reading Lists
THE ORIGINS OF EFFICIENCY
Archive
About
Latest
Top
Discussions
Reading List 03/14/26
Closure of the Strait of Hormuz, banning build-to-rent homes in the US, Honda’s EV losses, Travis Kalanick’s new company, Corpus Christi’s water crisis…
Mar 14
•
Brian Potter
99
6
3
The Elusive Cost Savings of the Prefabricated Home
It’s long been believed the constantly rising costs of new home construction, and lackluster improvements in construction productivity more generally…
Mar 12
•
Brian Potter
146
48
10
Reading List 03/07/2026
Data centers disconnecting from the grid, solar PV efficiency records, repairs for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Ford’s EV missteps, former OpenAI…
Mar 7
•
Brian Potter
59
1
4
A History of Operation Breakthrough
Many who look at the high and rising cost of housing see the problem as fundamentally one of production methods; more specifically, that homes could be…
Mar 6
•
Brian Potter
134
34
5
February 2026
Reading List 02/28/26
LA permitting costs, trickle-down housing, Panasonic stops making TVs, robotaxi remote operators, geothermal progress.
Feb 28
•
Brian Potter
101
4
4
Reading List 02/21/26
Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology.
Feb 21
•
Brian Potter
118
2
5
Is the Future “AWS for Everything”?
A theme running through my book is the idea that efficiency improvements, and the various methods for making products cheaper over time, have…
Feb 19
•
Brian Potter
177
27
11
Reading list 02/14/26
Welcome to the reading list, a weekly list of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology.
Feb 14
•
Brian Potter
46
1
3
Trends in US Construction Productivity
(This is a chapter of a longer report I’m working on that summarizes and expands the last several years of my work on construction productivity.
Feb 12
•
Brian Potter
89
19
8
Reading List 02/06/2026
Welcome to the reading list, a look at what happened this week in infrastructure, buildings, and building things.
Feb 6
•
Brian Potter
60
9
1
January 2026
Reading List for 01/31/2026
Welcome to the Reading List, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology.
Jan 31
•
Brian Potter
82
11
1
On Technologies vs. Commodities
A theory that has gained traction in the renewable energy space is that renewable energy sources like wind and solar are based on manufactured…
Jan 29
•
Brian Potter
124
24
6
This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please
turn on JavaScript
or unblock scripts
