Inspired by a building style found in parts of Scandinavia, Germany and elsewhere in Europe, a trio of companies hope to build three medium-sized apartment buildings and make it fast and sustainable, says Michael Barker, co-founder of R-Hauz. Solutions, a company that builds prefabricated houses.
“The traditional way of building is flawed. It failed,” Barker said. “It’s very intense… There is a lot of waste at work, a lot of mistakes are made, things get carried away.”
Companies are seeking city approval for the project as the Toronto area faces a crisis party at affordable housing because of what city planners call “the missing middle ground” – a lack of low- and mid-rise apartment buildings. Proponents say many of the proposed housing projects are slow to start or not completed due to complex rules, as well as construction time and costs.
This new approach, called the “flat-pack strategy”, would partially solve these problems by making it faster and cheaper – providing a “house of cards” building where the pieces come from the factory ready for use and the teams just assemble them on site, Barker says.
Michael Barker, co-founder of R-Hauz Solutions, says the traditional way of building is deeply flawed. (CBC News)
He and his partners, Windmill Developments and Leader Lane Developments, plan to build the three apartment buildings on the west end of town near Mimico GO Station, with 83 suites in total. Developers say they hope to start pre-ordering units in August and start construction by December.
The strategy will allow developers to work much faster, says Barker. Until now, six-story medium-sized homes have often been just as complicated to build with larger structures, creating little incentive to continue these developments, he adds.
The case for a new way of construction
R-Hauz Solutions completed an apartment building on Queen Street East in Leslieville last summer that is now occupied. The apartment buildings they plan to build as part of this plan will be substantial copies of that project, Barker says.
They will build the Ontario (CLC) timber buildings, which “bind carbon” for a lifetime, he says, adding that the method also minimizes the use of concrete, a material that it says is worse for the environment.
According to this method, the weather does not slow down construction so much and working conditions will usually be better, says Tamer El-Diraby, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto who is not involved in the project.
The pieces come from the factory ready for use and are assembled on site. The apartment building at 1598 Queen St. E., shown under construction in this photo, was built this way. (R-Hauz Solutions / Submitted)
He also says that it will be easier and cheaper to hire and teach workers to build these prefabricated structures than with more conventional construction methods.
“Finding people who are trained and willing to go to the site is becoming increasingly difficult,” said El-Diraby. “And the cost of that is rising.”
The new method could offer more jobs in the construction industry for young people, women and those with technical interests, he says. There are also benefits for neighbors. It means less noise and dust and less interruptions because the project is completed faster, says El-Diraby.
“Compressed time frame”
There is also efficiency in the design process, says Don Manlapaz, a partner at Leader Lane Developments.
“It’s such a tight schedule,” Manlapaz said. “You will be able to move in two years.”
And because the three apartment buildings use the same prototype, building design and layout, the approval process can be streamlined.
“Instead of having three separate development approvals in a development vision, it is a vision … revised into a collection,” he said.
He says a more modest low- or medium-height project such as one that fits the existing neighborhood can be subject to a shorter approval process at City Hall, without the need for zoning changes, which can often be time consuming with other construction projects.
Don Manlapaz, a partner at Leader Lane Developments, says the upcoming modular apartment project will go through a more efficient design process in the city. (CBC News)
Experts say change is a long way off.
“To a large extent, prefabricated and modular architecture lags behind the industry,” said Jason Halter, a professor at the Daniels School of Architecture and Design at the University of Toronto.
He sees positives for sustainability and speed of construction, noting that even reducing continuous travel to a site by several months could be significant in terms of energy and time savings. It also tends to waste less materials due to on-site errors, he says.
Not cheaper… yet
But Halter says: “I have not yet seen a prefabricated building much less expensive than the claim may be.”
El-Diraby agrees, saying that like any new technology, it may not save money right away.
“The scale is very important in this regard,” he said.
While the partnership has only three apartment buildings under construction at the moment, R-Hauz Solutions may sell its product to other developers, said Jonathan Westeinde, CEO and founder of Windmill Developments.
Halter says he hopes some of the savings from building prefabricated and modular homes efficiently, sustainably and at a lower cost will end up in the wallets of aspiring homeowners.
Another look at the new apartment building at 1598 Queen St. E., built with modular components by R-Hauz (R-Hauz Solutions / Submitted)
“It would be unfortunate if a developer maximized his profit in terms of his build application and did not transfer some of these savings.”
The original three-medium-sized apartments would be cheaper than most other street-level options, such as mansions, but roughly comparable to prices on large towers, says Westeinde.
Windmill has other projects in the works with an affordable housing element and hopes that as companies create working models in this new way, it becomes easier to reproduce and cheaper, he says.
“We think [it] “It has a real potential for a long-term plan to make up for this missing middle,” he said.
