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!
Thanks also to the Fifth Estate for writing about this fascinating new strata building.
Francesco ...
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