Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

Tag: knivsta

  • Architect and developer partner to build affordable prefab housing in Sweden

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    In this month’s issue of Monocle magazine (#80) they profile an interesting prefabricated and affordable housing project in Knivsta, Sweden.

    A collaboration between architect Andreas Martin-Löf and developer Junior Living, the project contains 124 single occupancy units, each of which has 32 square meters of interior space (that’s about 344 square feet).

    The way it was built is quite simple. The modular housing units were fabricated off-site and then inserted on-site into a prefabricated concrete frame. Think bottles going into a wine rack. Here’s a diagram showing how it works:

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    What’s truly amazing about this project though is how quickly it was built and how cost effective it actually was for end users. Construction started in January 2014 and residents started moving in about 3 months later. The sale prices ranged from €50,000 to €87,000 per unit. That’s roughly $62,000 to $98,000 in US dollars.

    Finally, here’s a shot of one of the interiors:

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    What do you all think of this project?

    Photography by Åke E:son Lindman via Andreas Martin-Löf Arkitekter