We don't usually cover non-residential prefabs, but a quick blurb published in the The Times (UK) caught my eye last month:
Work has begun on Britain’s first flat-pack school, which is arriving in a convoy of 20 lorries from a prefab building specialist in Switzerland.
St Agnes CE Primary in Longsight, Manchester, will be built from ready-made wooden frames that cut construction time, saving hundreds of thousands of pounds. Six hundred computer-cut wooden panels will be added, to complete the three-storey building. The biggest panels weigh two tonnes and are 12m (36ft) long.
Manchester's Evening News provided a little more info and the above video:
The panels will be made in a factory near Lausanne in Switzerland which specialises in manufacturing pre-fabricated panels from sustainable forests nearby. Holes for doors, window and sockets are drilled in advance using precise cutting techniques.
Other advantages:
Designers say the specially-treated timber joists are even more fire-resistant than steel, which can buckle and break under high temperatures.
Last year we covered a house in the San Francisco area that used a similar system made by Thoma Holz in Austria.
publication: The Manchester Evening News
length: 600 words
publication date: May 30, 2008