“Modules need to be skinny,” he told Architecture Australia, “and invariably they are long so that they fit on a truck … but you can make a fat plan, with conventional spatial qualities and dimensions, out of modular.”
The home has been built as a flexible space that could work as a boutique hotel. Entertaining areas and the main bedroom are upstairs, with a bathroom tucked into the angled corner of the building.
To allow the family’s young adults and their friends to come and go without disturbing the parents upstairs, the downstairs’ bedrooms, living space and bathroom are accessible from outdoors.
The modular home also meets local council rules requiring demountable buildings in areas affected by coastal erosion where homeowners may have to relocate. Some people have 12 hours, or 24 hours, to remove their homes.
If nearby Belongil Beach were to be hit by a massive storm causing the beach to wash away, as occurred at Byron’s Main Beach four years ago, the modular home is designed to be disassembled and loaded back on trucks as quickly as it arrived.
The interior of Blok Belongil modular house. Credit: Christopher Frederick Jones
Modular housing of a complete home (and prefabrication of parts of a home) has been touted for decades as a way to build more homes faster. The federal minister for science Ed Husic has said it could help solve the housing crisis.
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Leading architect Tone Wheeler wrote in the Herald that modular construction was faster, better quality, and greener with less waste and less transport. Despite its promise, it was unpopular, and many people equated it with hot and ugly school demountables.
“Metal-clad mobile homes and shed-like ‘granny flats’, both mostly prefab, has done nothing to quell the disdain for the temporary, not-real-home, feel,” Wheeler said.
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Burnett established the modular factory. He said construction in the factory was twice as fast as conventional building on site, and there was more control and certainty over costs. “I can tell you from the first drawing what it is going to cost,” he said.
Unlike Sydney, where rain has stopped work on building sites this week, there are no rain delays in a factory, he said.
Blok Modular and Vokes and Peters won the 2023 Houses magazine national award for best new house under 200m² for Stafford Heights, another modular home. In a time of massive cost escalation, its clever and restrained design produced a low-cost home, said the citation.
Julie Power is a lay juror on the NSW Architecture awards for new houses. The winners will be announced in late June.