Strata Experts: On the 10th Day the Strata God Rested

Genesis 2:2 it says that after creating the world “on the seventh day God ended his work that he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had made" (King James Bible).

The Strata God hasn't quite reached that exalted status yet ... but she's getting close.

You see, this residential strata apartment development in Western Australia was built in just 9 days - after which its creator (the Hickory Group) could rest.

Concorde South is a 6 storey, 77 unit residential development in South Headland that was constructed in 8.5 days. That's an average of 9 and bit apartments per day and means they have reduced construction time by 50% or more.

The building looks pretty good to me (comparable to other similarly priced apartment complexes) and contains 1, 2 and 3 bedroom accommodation. Apparently, they use prefabricated modules (108 in this case) for the main structure that are delivered to site, craned into place, connected and then the final fit-out is completed.

There are obvious benefits of this kind of construction for high density real estate including -

potentially lower construction costs
faster development cycles and housing availability
reduced developer risk due to delays
potentially lower prices
higher building uniformity & quality control

And, there are some less obvious benefits - like the potential for prefabricated building construction utilising redundant Australian automobile manufacturing resources as this article Building a housing industry from the relics of car industry by Jemma Green and Peter Newman suggests.

Of course, I wonder about the risk of building defects as a result of fast-tracked building methodology. But, frankly, its not like conventional construction methods are delivering defect free strata buildings now.

So, maybe pre-fab is the future of strata?

While we wait to see, enjoy these photos of the 9 day construction cycle. Its amazing!