Three floors and all made of wood: this is how a 460 m2 prefabricated house is assembled in seven days in Barcelona
The model of building the parts in a factory and assembling them on-site is on the rise, but it only represents 2% of the sector
BarcelonaEvery car that goes up Margarit Street, located on the shady side of Montjuïc, has trouble getting up the street. Some cars honk their horns and others have clutch problems: a truck loaded with laminated wooden beams and a huge telescopic crane, propped up with dozens of planks, take up half the street.
But these inconveniences will be short-lived. On Thursday, the 460-square-meter prefabricated wooden house that Arquima is assembling on Margarit Street will be fully built. After manufacturing the laminated wooden beams in just seven days at its Abrera plant, which produces 60,000 square meters of panels annually, fitting the pieces together on the site will take the same amount of time: one week. This is the greatest advantage of a growing sector: prefabricated housing is gaining ground and, although still relatively small, already represents 2% of the sector in Spain. The model has found a way to expand in refurbishment projects and social housing, but also in large-scale homes like the one Arquima is assembling this week on Margarit Street. The laminated structural beams are made of spruce from Austria, while the interior woodwork is pine grown in Spain.
Other positive aspects of this sector are sustainability, speed, and safety, and the price is generally similar to that of traditional construction. "Concrete is highly polluting because it's responsible for 40% of the sector's CO₂ emissions," Arquima spokesperson Stefano Carlo explained to the media. The house in question, with a triangular structure, is a single-family home with three floors and has sold for 800,000 euros, or about 1,800 euros per square meter.
"Industrialization can be cheaper, but you have to look at it objectively. An industrialized house is just as expensive as a traditional one, but when it starts to go well, you build a lot of them. If you have sustained demand and plan to build 600 homes a year, industrialization pays off," the dean recently explained in ARA. Generally, it consists of two types: 2D, which comprises complete panels with doors, sockets, and insulation—as is the case with the wooden house in question—and 3D, which is made with complete three-dimensional modules.