A construction crane lifts a prefabricated wall section into place. Germany has plenty of experience with prefab housing — but not all of it is positive.
Credit: Nokera AG
Germany Revives a Building Style With a Bleak History: Prefab Housing
Mass-produced concrete apartment towers once dominated cities in the former East Germany. Can modern Plattenbauten win over new fans with better design and materials?
On a bustling construction site in Mannheim, a former industrial hub in Germany’s south, builders are putting the finishing touches on pink and creamy-white timber buildings that look like copied-and-pasted toy blocks laid out around a central square.
The apartment complex, which will contain 194 units of much-needed affordable housing, is being constructed from prefabricated elements — factory-built walls and other modular elements that are trucked to the worksite, reducing costs and construction times. It’s a technique that Germany’s newly appointed housing minister, Verena Hubertz, says is the key to fixing the housing crisis plaguing Germany’s cities.