Technology is changing many of the ways we access information, particularly through AI and is now about to shake up how housing is built in Australia. As part of the NSW government’s recent budget, the Premier and Treasurer have announced that the government “will invest in a world-class facility to harness cutting-edge prefabrication, modular construction and digital technologies to produce high quality housing faster.”
Spinifex is an opinion column. If you would like to contribute, contact us to ask for a detailed brief.
Australian industry and designers have flirted with prefabrication for a few decades. Queensland architect Gabriel Poole developed the Takeaway series 30 years ago using prefabrication to get architecture to more people. In 2018, Melbourne architect Nonda Katsalidis developed a prefabrication system called KLIK that could be used in apartment buildings. Unfortunately, he was ahead of the market, and without sufficient numbers of homes, the venture closed.
In Japan, the car manufacturer Toyota has been producing prefabricated homes for decades. The Toyota Home is delivered on a truck and craned onto a site as a fully complete home. Their latest model is the Net Zero Energy House complete with solar collectors on the roof.
In Sweden, IKEA branched out to producing the BoKlok prefabricated home decades ago as a natural extension of their furniture business. The advantage, their website says, is to: “streamline the construction process, reduce waste, minimise emissions and significantly cut down on build time.”
A number of Australian developers have seen the global changes to new methods of construction and are importing completed apartment units from Vietnam and China.
I recently visited a site in Macquarie Park where developer Freecity is building a 20 storey student housing project using prefabricated units from China which are of a very high quality. A large crane lifts the units off trucks; then a few days later the next units can be placed.
This new approach is called VMC or Volumetric Modular Construction, and it seems to be taking off in Australia, particularly for Build to Rent apartments and for student housing. As units are built in a factory environment, it is easier to achieve environmental performance standards, and the delivery of a completed unit to site minimises the number of trucks coming to the site.
The NSW government initiative will need to ensure that there are sufficient units that will flow from the prefabrication process into real projects. A big advantage the government has is the need for the construction of more social housing, either by replacing old building stock or by building for the long waiting list of tenants.
Homes NSW, which has already piloted these new approaches to building, is an ideal organisation to help drive the change.
The government has been diligent in setting up the building rules to help with the new initiatives by reforming the Building Bill 2026 to recognise prefabricated buildings in law.
The government’s Pattern Book designs can also be adapted to a prefabrication process. Another of the new names connected to the government’s announcement is modern methods of construction (MMC), and it is under this heading that tenders will be called for experienced local and international operators to partner with the NSW Government.
Just as AI has suddenly swept across so many areas of society, so too is a new rethink on how housing is built and delivered. We can learn from other countries like China and Japan and other industries like Toyota’s car assembly or Ikea’s furniture system. The timing for these changes comes as we are struggling to provide sufficient new homes for the current housing crisis.
While the government is providing leadership in changing how we build our homes, it is the private sector that builds most of Australia’s homes.
And many private companies like Freecity are already building faster and with high quality with prefabrication, or Modern Methods of Construction, or Volumetric Modular Construction.
While developing a local industry for this approach is a positive move, this will need to be balanced by importing quality prefab units for our Asian neighbours. The combination of the housing crisis with the rapid advance of technologies like AI and the rethinking of traditional building approaches that learn from automobile assembly and furniture supply is coming at just the right time to have a real impact on the future of housing supply.
