HUF-Haus visit lifts the lid on a future we need

Hartenfels is a small village about 1.5 hours north-west of Frankfurt. It is old, with a towered fort on the top of a small hill, and maybe two hundred houses gathered around its skirts. It doesn’t even have a café or restaurant. But it does have a factory employing nearly 400 people, producing some of the finest residential buildings I have ever seen, anywhere. It has a display village with several different house types showcasing the various styles and finishes that are trotted out of that factory, in modular form, to the tune of several hundred every year. This is HUF-Haus headquarters, one of twelve display and sales centres scattered around Europe.

It can be difficult at first to reconcile the extraordinarily high standard of finish, the beautifully crafted joinery, the sophisticated hardware and high performance equipment, the bespoke (there – I’ve said it!) triple glazed windows and doors made by their own glazing company – all of these things, to be reconciled against the fact that these are factory-made, all components loaded on trucks and carted to site, and assembled in a week or two, with sustainability performance that puts most of what we build in Australia to shame. They produce what would be a 10 Star equivalent as their base option, and you can option up everything from total solar power roofs to full Passiv-Haus certification.

I will let the photos they invited us to shoot tell the story of the style, the attention to detail, the quality. And then it will take discussions and cooperation – certainly more space and time than will fit in this blog post – to explore how Australia’s relatively embryonic modular constructors can achieve the same outcome. That is a discussion to be had in many forums, from ASBEC to PrefabAUS, and BDA to AIA, not forgetting the usually less than enthusiastic HIA and MBA.

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But achieve it we must. And I think with enough clever thinking, and sufficient commitment (ie, capital) we will do just that. SekisuiHouse are leading modular builders in Japan, and have begun making some inroads into systematising construction in Australia, but a lot more reformation is needed in that space. And that requires vision, and capital. Whether that capital commitment comes from established names like Sekisui, or from other local investors coming from outside the industry remains to be seen.

It’s common knowledge that most of the good Australian prefabricators are based around Melbourne. Why this is so remains a bit of a mystery, but it’s also worth noting that the best in NSW are bridging any remaining gap quickly. But there remains a large gap between our best, and the HUF product. It’s not a case of cultural cringe, it’s self evident. And make no mistake, there are some pretty ordinary buildings in Europe too, but very few – thanks to much better regulation and much higher market expectations.

The other key message from HUF is affordability. They give the lie to the usual line taken by industry laggards that sustainability and high performance rule out affordability. The lower priced “Black and White” HUF series sells for about €400,000. Ignoring the exchange rate, and using the average wage comparison rate, this approximately equivalent to the upper-middle earnings in the EU (keeping in mind these are not equal across the EU – lower in Italy, higher Germany etc). In equivalent Australian terms, it is about the same as a modest custom built house, but of higher finish quality, and far superior performance.

“I have seen the future!” said Doc to Marty McFly. In housing, the future is most certainly modular, and in HUF-Haus, it’s already here. Get with it, Oz!

PHOTO: HUF HAUS executive, the delightful Silke Thomas, standing in the HUF Museum which traces the company’s history from its beginnings in 1912. Silke guided us through the display village, and explained the HUF approach to materials, and client management.

(Envirotecture director, Dick Clarke, recently visited HUF-Haus in Germany. Made famous on Grand Designs, HUF are arguably the best modular house builders in the world, and Dick went with high expectations. He did not come away disappointed.)