I mean clearly I'm not seriously expecting them to demolish it...Having said that...affordable housing or not, it would be nice if the standards were a little higher than this.

I question though... if the ultimate goal here is to minimize cost per unit, why is this being building downtown? Surely there are cheaper plots of land out there.
 
For a first time application it's not bad in the grand scheme of things. It could be better, and I'm sure some tweaking will help in future modular projects.
 
Golfing guy said:
Don’t think they care. This project is about one thing and that’s affordable housing. Can they improve? probably? I’m sure the cost per square foot was significantly less than the first building across the street. Their mandate isn’t impressing the Skyrise fanbase.
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I have heard that the big advantage was speed, but not necessarily cost savings. While it is second hand information, I was told this project worked out to be a comparable $psf cost as a traditional stick built condo.
 
I would think standardization with something like this would bring down costs. I wouldn't want this specifically standardized but it isn't far off from something interesting, all you have to do is stagger modules to create something other than a square. They did it for the entrance, it just needed to continue beyond that. If this was more dynamic, it would be much much better.

You could even reduce the number of units as you go up and create these giant steps.
 
MichaelS said:
I have heard that the big advantage was speed, but not necessarily cost savings. While it is second hand information, I was told this project worked out to be a comparable $psf cost as a traditional stick built condo.
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I wonder how build quality / keeping to schedule would vary between the two approaches over a consistent program of multiple buildings.

The modular approach would probably benefit from repetition at ever greater scales, so if you build 20 of these projects instead of just one, greater efficiencies could be achieved through optimizing your assembly line.

Not sure the breakdown of schedule risks and how they would differ between modular v. traditional approaches. Due to a longer typical build time, are traditional built wood-frame subject to more variability due to weather, changing economics? I would think so, but easy for a single building to get lucky and not have any time-based issues.
 
We will see with Attainable Homes. I think I heard they have 5 sites lined up (the 2nd one is the Sunnyside Triangle site). In speaking to someone at Attainable Homes, one of the challenges they needed to solve was to have a pipeline of sites ready to go so to keep the assembly line constantly moving for them. So, you need to be a pretty big volume player to do this methodology I think. We will see if the costs come down substantially as they move on to site's 3-5, hopefully they do.
 
There's probably a reason why modular buildings seem to perpetually be "on the verge", or relegated to edge cases. Usually when a better technology or process is introduced, and it can scale, it's adopted relatively quickly... so I imagine if there were real tangible and consistent savings to be had with modular construction, they would have taken up much wider adoption by now by the bigger players.

Scaling up to be more efficient sounds logical, but I imagine it probably also introduces many new barriers with the growth. There's so much variance with things like regulations, land types, environmental factors, customer tastes, lending, etc....the more jurisdictions and customers you try to build for, the harder it becomes trying to get everyone on the same page. Modularity/standardization already works great in parts or for certain tasks/items, but it seems like a really hard thing to pull off holistically at scale.
 
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Modular would have more cost benefits if the buildings were all the same or slightly different, but with varying designs I can see how the cost advantage wouldn't be much different. You still pay for the materials, and labor. You have the advantage of working indoors in all lighting or weather conditions, but that's offset by the cost of the building itself to work indoors.
 
DiscoStu said:
There's probably a reason why modular buildings seem to perpetually be "on the verge", or relegated to edge cases. Usually when a better technology or process is introduced, and it can scale, it's adopted relatively quickly... so I imagine if there were real tangible and consistent savings to be had with modular construction, they would have taken up much wider adoption by now by the bigger players.

Scaling up to be more efficient sounds logical, but I imagine it probably also introduces many new barriers with the growth. There's so much variance with things like regulations, land types, environmental factors, customer tastes, lending, etc....the more jurisdictions and customers you try to build for, the harder it becomes trying to get everyone on the same page. Modularity/standardization already works great in parts or for certain tasks/items, but it seems like a really hard thing to pull off holistically at scale.
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Modular is just a fundamentally flawed concept and it is not going to catch on despite what the feds think. We've been trying to make modular happen for the last 60 years and it simply has not worked. Houses are not cars and it's ridiculous that the industry is touting this as if it's a new idea. It's not. The Modernists tried it in the 50s.
 
CallmeCatbread said:
Modular is just a fundamentally flawed concept and it is not going to catch on despite what the feds think. We've been trying to make modular happen for the last 60 years and it simply has not worked. Houses are not cars and it's ridiculous that the industry is touting this as if it's a new idea. It's not. The Modernists tried it in the 50s.
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Why does it work elsewhere? Most notably in Nordic countries. Do they just have the volume that allows the manufacturers to realize efficiencies? I assume they probably, because of their small size and political system, are able to realize the efficiencies because of an accepted collective approach to their issues. Housing isn't perfect in those countries either I do think it is quite difficult to find affordable housing.

The issue here seems to be a lack of volume and that seems to be an issue of the builders that do these projects, they're affordable housing builders which don't do work in multiple cities. I cannot imagine how different every city in this country tries to encourage affordable housing. The lack of consistency would be a big administrative burden having to navigate that as one organization in multiple cities.

This sadly just goes back to the feds, a national builder, exiting housing and downloading it to cities.
 
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The only way modular will catch on is with significant public subsidy. Housing is inherently cyclical which conflicts with off-site manufacturing which requires steady demand to function properly. So yes, it would only work if the feds were consistently building at a significant volume.

But even then I don't really see the benefit. Modular is faster but it is not even remotely cheaper. And while the quality can certainly improve (vastly) from the absolute dogshit were seeing in Calgary, ultimately I don't think the quality or longevity can totally match up to what can be achieved with other methods that we're better equipped to handle.
 
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