Prefabricated Concrete Assembled Housing

Prefabricated concrete assembled housing is a building form that uses industrially produced building components assembled on-site. It has various types, technologies, and significant advantages, with a long development history and promising market prospects in China.

Main Types and Technologies

The main types of prefabricated concrete assembled housing include panel-assembled, box-assembled, and frame-assembled types. The technologies cover prefabricated concrete structures and steel structures, with components including prefabricated beams, slabs, walls, and columns. Taking the construction of a house using reinforced concrete prefabricated components as an example, builders use special double-layer walls composed of two layers of concrete slabs connected by welded wire mesh. At the construction site, a light crane lifts the reinforced concrete walls vertically and places them in the designed locations, securing them with special brackets to ensure the panels are level and perpendicular to the ground at a 90-degree angle. After installation, the spaces within the reinforced concrete structure are filled with concrete, resulting in a solid, integrated wall. Modular construction is a more highly integrated model within prefabricated construction, where buildings are disassembled into individual modules, manufactured in factories, and then transported to the construction site for assembly. The ceilings, floors, plumbing, and electrical lines of the house are all prefabricated on the factory assembly line and then assembled on-site like building blocks.

Advantages and Characteristics

Compared to traditional construction methods, modular construction offers advantages such as shorter construction periods, controllable quality, energy efficiency, environmental protection, and ease of maintenance, with construction periods reduced by more than 60%. For example, in a public housing project in Shenzhen, Guangdong, five residential buildings nearly 100 meters high were assembled from 6,028 concrete modules. The completion and delivery time was reduced from 2.5 to 3 years to 1 year, and on-site labor was reduced by about 50%, significantly reducing noise, dust, construction waste, and traffic congestion at the construction site.

Development History

China's prefabricated concrete technology began in the 1950s and was initially applied to factory and residential construction. In the 1970s, driven by the policy of building industrialization, standardization, and mechanization, technical systems such as large-panel structures and box structures were formed. In the mid-1980s, development stalled due to cost and quality issues but resumed in the 21st century due to production efficiency and environmental advantages. Companies like Vanke Group developed prefabricated shear wall residential structural systems and applied prefabricated frame technologies in projects, such as the Nanjing Jindi Yufang project, which used a prestressed prefabricated concrete assembled integral frame structural system.

Market Prospects

Chinese-made prefabricated houses are selling well overseas. According to customs data, in the first four months of 2026, the Guangzhou Customs District exported movable houses worth 1.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 38.1%.