(07-30-2023, 07:07 PM)Acitta Wrote: Does it have to be garbage, or can it be quality construction? Plenty of buildings built the old-fashioned way turn out to be garbage also.
Sure, you can build better prefabricated products but then the cost goes up due to the complexities in the manufacturing and installation. You'd have to find a way to somehow produce entire prefabricated buildings off site in numerous factories, ship them to a building site, have them installed in a cost efficient manner and so on. That would have to be cheaper and easier than just old school construction where you hire a bunch of guys, dig a hole, place rebar, pour concrete and repeat. In some cases, it's cheaper to do. Or it can be more logical to use...if you're trying to build some structures on say a remote reserve in Northern Ontario where you have logistical issues with staff or transportation of raw materials for the building (rebar, beams, concrete, glass etc) then yeah it's sensible to ship a precast building up there, have a crew put it together and you're done and it'll last...a while. But I wouldn't use the stuff for something that is intended to be long term in a major city. Re: the video...China loves the stuff because they're all about quantity and efficiently, not quality. They don't care if the thing literally collapses floor by floor in a year, so long as it gets built when they want it.
There's also precast - which is different. It has its uses in some applications and I think it's great for mass producing residential buildings. You can throw up a building using precast panels in a short time. Problem is...it tends to get used because it's cheaper. Meaning, the building is likely going to look like shit. Take a company like Stubbes Precast whose products are used all over the region: https://www.stubbes.org/total-precast-overview
I'd look at it this way using furniture as a comparison. Do you want to have quality - a good hardwood dresser that is going to last you literally centuries? Go buy something from the Mennonites or whoever makes nice wood furniture. Do you want to buy a dresser right now and have it in your bedroom full of clothes today? Drive to Ikea. The differences will be clear, though. One is going to be hardwood and one is going to be the cheapest, mass produced particleboard and glue garbage on the planet. One is going to be more durable and last you a lifetime and it sure isn't the trash that is mass produced in China aka Ikea products.
It really comes down to what you expect and what you are willing to pay for. There's no reason we can't build quality buildings in an efficient way - we used to do it no problem, just look at the skyscrapers we put up all over this continent nearly 100 years ago. They're beautiful buildings and will last as long as the pyramids in Egypt have. But those invested in development these days don't really care about the longevity and quality of the product. That's why so many developers go with precast junk these days. So entirely prefab buildings are likely going to be much worse because it's still quite costly to build them with quality in mind.