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LANE COVE PROJECT IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

Words from The Daily Telegraph – www.dailytelegraph.com.au

A house built in a matter of weeks and delivered in a day was everything these owners wanted.

They say timing is everything and in the case of this Lane Cove house, that certainly rings true. It may look like a regular house but its arrival in the suburb was met with much anticipation — and its journey to the site was planned with precision.

The house is made up of four separate modules and was built offsite and transported on four trucks, with a crane lowering the modules into place in a single day — two on the lower level and two directly above. By the time the sun set that day, the formerly empty site had become home to a two-storey, four-bedroom house with two separate living areas.

FROM THE FACTORY

Much of the work by modular building company Modscape took place before the delivery day. Construction was at the Modscape Factory in Brooklyn, on the outskirts of Melbourne — hundreds of kilometres away from Lane Cove — so the owners were able to live in their former, much smaller, home until about six weeks prior to the arrival of their new house.

Once the owners moved out, the old home at the Lane Cove site was demolished, apart from the old sandstone foundations, which were suitable for the new dwelling. Using the old foundations meant the house would effectively be positioned in the same place as the old house, with one module sitting further forward than the other.

Modscape managing director Jan Gyrn says the position of the modules worked well.

“The way in which this design is configured with four modules staggered, stacked on top of each other, is a pretty efficient layout,”
he says. “You’re effectively getting four bedrooms and two living areas as well as a little study area into that tight space.”

SIGNED, SEALED, DELIVERED

The plans were drawn up by an architect and as much work as possible was completed at the factory, including the kitchen, bathrooms, study and a second living space that could also function as a guest area.

“The modules were 100 per cent completed in our factory, with the exception of the flooring and then sealed and prepared for transport,” Jan says.

“They were delivered from Melbourne to the outskirts of Sydney on a Tuesday. Then in the early hours of Wednesday morning they travelled to the site and were installed on the block that morning.”

Three weeks later, the house was ready for the owners to move in.

“The first exercise once the modules had landed was getting all the services connected and the function of the house working,” Jan says. “Once that was done we were basically making all the external and internal connections and then the final part was the flooring. Then we do a final clean and any touch ups prior to handover with the client.”

Jan says the design and development phase of the project took eight weeks, the Complying Development approval took four weeks and the design and documentation phase was eight weeks, prior to the 12-week build period.

2021-04-08T11:52:21+10:00 May 21st, 2018|Modscape, Press/media|

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