Dough - The Future of Housebuilding
Sliced Bread
BBC
4.6 • 695 Ratings
🗓️ 18 September 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Could your future home be built by a robot bricklayer?
Greg Foot, host of the BBC Radio 4 show 'Sliced Bread', now brings you 'Dough'.
Each episode explores future wonder products that might rise to success and redefine our lives.
Experts and entrepreneurs discuss the trends shaping what today's everyday technology may look like tomorrow, before a leading futurist offers their predictions on what life might be like within five, ten and fifty years.
This episode examines the future of UK housebuilding.
Will new homes be cheaper to run and built to a higher standard? What potential do robots have to build quality homes quickly and cheaply? Could building homes with bricks become a thing of the past? Might 3D printing homes with concrete be a realistic alternative? And will factories play a bigger part in meeting the demand for new housing?
Alongside Greg is the futurist Tom Cheesewright and expert guests including Prof. Richard Fitton, Professor of Building Performance at the University of Salford and Salar al Khafaji, the CEO and founder of Monumental which builds autonomous on-site construction robots.
Produced by Jon Douglas. Dough is a BBC Audio North Production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
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| 0:17.2 | Many of them are very funny. |
| 0:19.1 | Which I think means... |
| 0:20.3 | A hatful of ha-hars. And energy. Even if you do say so ourselves. I agree 100% to that. Find them all on BBC Sounds. Just tell us a joke. Come on, tell us a joke. Tell us a joke. Come on, tell us a joke. Just search comedy on BBC Sounds. I'm really looking forward to getting stuck in. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:40.9 | You're about to listen to Doe. |
| 0:42.5 | Episodes are released weekly on Thursdays wherever you get your podcasts, |
| 0:46.2 | but if you're in the UK, you can listen to the latest episode first on BBC Sounds, |
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| 0:54.4 | Hello, I'm Greg Foote, and welcome to Doe, the BBC Radio 4 show that explores future |
| 0:59.6 | wonder products that might rise to success and redefine our lives. Each episode, I sit down |
| 1:05.4 | with entrepreneurs and experts to discuss what today's everyday technology may look like tomorrow. |
| 1:17.6 | This time we're discussing the future of house building, asking if your future home might be built by a robot bricklayer, or whether bricks will be a thing of the past. |
| 1:20.6 | Well, on site with me today, here to lay the solid foundations to help us construct some concrete ideas. It's the foreman of the future. Tom Cheeswright. Hello, Tom. Hello, Greg. I feel like I should be wearing a hard hat. I feel you should. What are you doing? Did you not get the memo? So last time you joined me, you told us how you've built your own electric car. So surely, Tom, you've also built your own home. Do you know, I have the opposite of my own home being built. It's 150 years old. Okay. A lot of customisations, but no, I haven't quite laid any bricks yet. Okay, all right. Well, joining me and Tom in the studio is someone who definitely knows his fiberglass from his foam board. He and I recently chatted about dehumidifiers for an episode of Slice Bread, and he's now making |
| 2:03.3 | his dough debut, Professor of Building Performance at the University of Salford, and Technical |
| 2:08.6 | Director of its Energy House Labs, Professor Richard Fitton. |
| 2:12.3 | Welcome, Richard. |
... |
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