Sweden builds houses and apartments like Lego sets. Why don’t we?
Vox · Marina Bolotnikova ·
Sweden builds houses and apartments in factories. But the real lesson for America isn’t about copying Swedish technology.
Sweden has given the world many wonderful gifts. Zara Larsson, obviously. Spotify and social democracy. And Ikea, the company that showed us you can furnish your apartment, stylishly and affordably, with the contents of a few flatpack boxes.
Sweden’s talent for mass-producing clever, easy-to-assemble home fixtures also extends to something much bigger than bookshelves and bed frames: building entire houses and apartments. Ikea has become one of the biggest furniture retailers in the US (and perhaps our top purveyor of vegan meatballs). But those factory-built Swedish homes? Americans can’t have them. Yet.
In factories throughout Sweden, workers assemble modular rooms that will become components of new homes — kitchens and bathrooms, for example, complete with counters, sinks, windows, electric wiring and plumbing, and even dishwashers and washing machines. The modules are then trucked to their final destinations, hoisted up by crane, and arranged into place to form whole single-family or multifamily buildings — like a giant Lego set, as Lindbäcks, one of the country’s top manufacturers of factory-built housing, describes it. One modular development with 114 apartments was assembled on-site from its component parts in about five weeks. (Perhaps it comes as little surprise that Ikea was even a founder of one of Sweden’s prefabricated housing ventures.)