Cars are expensive to buy and it would be pretty shocking to discover they were assembled outside in all weathers. Homes are a great deal more expensive than cars and yet we do assemble them outside in all weathers – at least until the roofs go on and the windows are installed. The consensus seems to be that houses, offices, schools and all our other buildings are built the way they are because it is simply what we have always done. However, how we build is set to change and wood is at the heart of this possible change. This chapter will look at the potential to build homes like we do cars, in factories, and deliver them direct to site essentially ready, or almost ready, to inhabit. As wood is ideally suited for these factory builds – and is therefore the main construction material used – and our aim is to use more timber in the built environment for all the excellent reasons we’ve outlined, changing the way we build to one that can facilitate that is something we need to actively support.

Fans of the Channel 4 “Grand Designs” television programme may remember the 2004 episode which followed retired couple Greta and David Iredale all the way from Walton-on-Thames in England to Hartenfels in western Germany to see the “HUF HAUS” they had ordered from a catalogue being manufactured in a factory. The HUF HAUS company, active since 1921, are the “gold standard” of flat-packed, delivered-to-site, ready-to-assemble homes. Seen by many as the epitome of luxury and exclusivity, they are iconic structures of timber and glass that do not come cheap (see Figure 11.1). This exclusivity is maintained by a production limit of 200 houses per year, 40 per cent of which currently head to the UK.

At the other end of the price spectrum are Bristol-based Agile Homes who specialize in small one-, two- or three- bedroomed timber-framed houses, still with style. They are aimed at filling a specific need, usually in an urban setting, with a new home for homeless people or those on low incomes.