Vertikal (471-481 King St E) | 23 & 19 fl | U/C

[ijmorlan]

Here is something that could be pre-fabricated: bathrooms. Standard apartment bathrooms in non-luxury accommodation are not architecturally interesting, often don’t even have windows, and are already mostly in a small number of meaningfully-different plans. It should be possible to create a small number of plans (powder room, full bathroom, maybe a couple of variations including one that includes space for laundry appliances) and churn out the entire room as a unit which is just lowered into place during construction. The trick is that in order to actually be worthwhile the savings would have to be entirely in construction efficiency, not in how they’re built — the actual toilets, for example, should be normal toilets that can be replaced later in the same way that a toilet in a non-prefab bathroom would be replaced. Otherwise this would just create a maintenance and repair nightmare later.

Bathrooms are small enough that a truck could bring enough for several apartments. Instead of having to bring in plumbers, electricians, painters, tile specialists, trim and maybe others, only some of them would be needed in order to do the hookups.