“We’re leading the charge to change the way of construction in the Netherlands, and hopefully in Europe,” says Joziene van de Linde, managing director of modular construction company De Meeuw, which joined the Holland Metropole alliance this year.

Her mission is to change the way developers and construction companies think about modular building which, she says, offers huge advantages to traditional techniques, particularly given the pressure to build more homes at present.

“There is a housing crisis in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe, and the way we have built homes for the past 100 years is not going to work anymore,” she says. “We need to build quickly and we need to reduce our impact on the environment. Prefabricated buildings, modular ones in particular, used to be considered to be cheap rubbish and were used at times of crisis. We want to show that today’s modular approach fits in upscale developments and high rise as well.”

Green advantages

Winning hearts and minds for this faster and less environmentally-taxing approach to construction led De Meeuw, part of the giant Dutch industrial group VDL, to start its own projects.

One of these is next to the company’s headquarters in Oirschot, which borders Eindhoven, and where 100 prefabricated homes are being built on the company’s own land. “We can show that we believe in the quality of our own products and that we are able to build very high-quality homes, not only social housing but high-end apartments,” says Joziene.

De Meeuw’s Oirschot factory is capable of turning out five hundred square metres of building per day using its modular construction technique, or about 12 homes.  “If you build a complex 10 or 20 storeys high in an inner city location it takes you two years of coming and going with heavy lorries,” Joziene says. “We can do it in 10, 12 weeks. We’ve done all building in our own factory and we just need to assemble it at the location, polish the façade and then we’re done.”

Cheaper and faster

There are other advantages too. “Environmental building standards, at a European level, are okay, but I believe we can do way better, specifically in the construction process and in the choice of materials,” Joziene says. “The pre-fabricated construction produces half the CO2 and 25% of the nitrogen-based pollution when compared with regular construction, which is a huge difference.”

Modular construction is also cheaper, given that the costs of engineers and architects have already been factored in through the design of turnkey modules. “Architects can put together their own design and building with our building blocks, without the need for a structural engineer. After which we can produce that building,” she points out.

The idea that modular construction produces rows of identical boxes is totally outdated, she says. “It is certainly not a one-size-fits-all all approach. One of the best compliments someone visiting one of our projects can give me is to say, ‘Oh, it’s just a home. There is nothing special about it’.”

You can meet Joziene and the rest of the De Meeuw team at the Holland Metropole stand at Expo Real from October 7 to 9. Hall 2, stand 130.

Illustration: VDL DeMeeuw’s modular housing in practice