Datelline’s last episode analyzes the prefabricated houses of Sweden and if they can be the response to the Australian housing supply crisis. Note the Flatpack houses in Sweden on April 8 at 9.30 pm in SBS or SBS on request.
Perched on a cliff with a view of the Baltic Sea, the Swedish couple Rickard Rundqvist and Mattias Borg’s house seems to be taken from the pages of an architecture magazine.
With floor by roof, exposed wood and minimalist decoration, its maximum Scandinavian aesthetic: simple and functional.
But what makes this house in a 70 -square -meter room with a sauna is even more noticeable is that it was built in six days, using a construction process called prefabrication, or prefabricated, where all parts of a structure are built in a factory and are carried in the site for assembly.
“We had to do some interior things such as bath and kitchen,” says Mattias. “But more or less the house was there: the windows, the roof, everything.”
The house of Rickard Rundqvist and Mattias Borg is a 70 -square -meter house of a room and a bathroom with a sauna overlooking the Baltic Sea. Fountain: SBS / Colin Cozier
Historically, Prefab has had a bad reputation. In Australia, it is often associated with school decline and mining dibes. And although the process can be considered as of low quality and unlikely, Rickard and Mattias say that his home was designed to reflect his vision in collaboration with the architects of the construction company.
“This is totally tailored from our drawings,” says Mattias.
“People think that the prefabricated house is that you have to choose it from a catalog. But it is not really, it is just a way of building it, which is much more efficient.”
Although the couple does not reveal the total costs, they say it saved money because there was less labor involved.
“I think it’s the most practical way to do it. [We saved] time and money, [it was] Much more profitable, “says Rickard.
House factories
Like Australia, Sweden is in a housing crisis, with a lack of supply at the root of the problem.
High housing prices are pushing the ownership of housing out of the reach of many, which forces more people to a superpobiled rental market.
High housing demand has fed an boom in prefabricated construction, seen as a faster and more efficient way to build new homes.
Throughout the country, the so -called ‘house factories’ produce up to four apartments a day, equipped with isolation, electricity and plumbing and ready for assembly on the site.
In Sweden, the so -called ‘house factories’ build four apartments a day, equipped with isolation, electricity and plumbing and ready for assembly in the place. A few months are needed to build an apartment building. Fountain: SBS / Colin Cozier
Modelted in the automotive industry, factories have their operations focused on a main production line, with robots working together with humans to obtain speed and efficiency.
It is estimated that 90 percent of the houses and 20 percent of the several -story apartments in Sweden are built with wood using the prefabricated method.
In Sweden, where 70 percent of the territory is covered with forest, wood is defended as a friendly alternative to other construction materials such as steel and concrete.
“When we are talking about wood today, we are talking about massive wood or designed wood,” says architect Oskar Norelius.
Norelius leads an ambitious project, Wood City, a new residential district in southern Stockholm with 2,000 apartments and 7,000 office spaces, as well as restaurants, retail and supermarkets, all built with prefabrication.
He says that the designed wood, a type of material made of layers of wooden boards in different directions, is light, resistant to fire and gives the building structural strength.
“It is a good material, it is very light, it is quite easy to work in a factory,” he says.
‘We could land one’
Kilian Schott, twenty -four years old, and Maja Blomgren, 20, recently moved to their rental, a small apartment on the outskirts of Stockholm.
The couple lived with Maja’s parents and thought it would have been to find their own affordable home. But then an influx of prefabricated apartments arrived in their desired area.
A young Maja and Kilian couple were able to ensure a rental study in a new apartment complex that was built in ten months using the prefabricated method. Fountain: SBS / Colin Cozier
Its complex is composed of 96 apartments, all built in a factory.
He took only eight weeks to build each apartment on the site. The entire construction, factory until the end, took ten months.
“I think 60 apartments were published at the same time. And since they had no 60 people who requested them, they took all possible tenants and gave them the opportunity to rent these apartments,” says Kilian.
Can Australia build the Swedish form?
The Australian housing crisis is also largely driven by the lack of supply. How we build our future is a very debated choice.
The federal government says that Australia will need 1.2 million new homes in the next five years, and there is a growing recognition of the possible benefits of prefabrication.
In its last budget, Labor promised almost $ 50 million to support the construction of modular housing. State governments are also launching money into the industry.
Professor Mathew Aitchison of the Chiefs Building of the University of Monash 4.0 CRC, a research center co -financed by the federal government. Its goal is to make Australia build better, faster and faster houses.
He believes that prefabricated is a solution, but says he is not exempt from risks.
“If you want to do a prefabricated housing business, it requires a lot of capital to configure it. It requires planning, it requires knowledge of manufacturing and that can take some time.”
Mathew Aitchison from Monash University says there are many lessons that Australia can learn from Sweden in prefabricated construction. Fountain: SBS / Colin Cozier
And he says that to be profitable for companies and affordable for consumers, he must build on a scale.
“It is possible to build anything prefabricated, but it will cost much more money if it is unique. The value it obtains from prefabrication is when high volumes occur in factories.”
And in Australia, that will not happen overnight.
“We don’t have the same history and manufacturing culture as Swedes. [the house factories] They have developed for decades. “
There are also other obstacles, he says. Banks are not properly configured to provide money to people for construction projects outside the site and construction regulations will probably need a review.
Prefab represents less than 10 percent of construction in Australia, as preferred, the maximum body for the construction industry outside the site.
But Aitchison says the impulse is being built.
“There is a lot of interest in [prefab] In Australia at this time and that comes from industry and government. There are many lessons that we can learn from Sweden, and I think the future of construction is a future of industrialization. “
Prefab represents less than 10 percent of the construction in Australia, with the manufacture of the sheath of the bathroom as the most developed part of the industry. Fountain: SBS / Colin Cozier
Speaking from a modular bathing factory on the central coast of NSW, where they do around 16 bathrooms a day, Aitchison says that this type of prefabricated is taking off.
“I would say that the manufacture of the bath sheath is perhaps the most mature part of the prefabricated industry of Australia,” he explains.
“Instead of having equipment working for weeks on a construction site at level 25 in the center of Sydney, they can do all the work here in a factory and leave this capsule in [an apartment] in a single day. “
Aitchison does not believe that a Mega House factory, like those of Sweden, works in Australia. He prefers to see the industry to adopt the idea of smaller factories that specialize in different elements of a home.
“[Prefab] It can be what we want it to be. So, for me, accelerating that construction time using less materials, less waste, less labor, that is innovation. “
