Building smarter: why it’s time to rethink modular design in Australia
Practical, sustainable, efficient, and big on benefits — there’s a lot to love about modular design.
As Australia’s cities grow and its climate challenges intensify, the development sector finds itself at a crossroads. Whether you’re planning housing in dense urban centres, delivering critical healthcare infrastructure, or responding to a national skills shortage, the pressure is on to build faster, smarter, and more sustainably. Traditional construction methods, while familiar, are proving increasingly slow, costly, and inflexible in today’s environment.
Enter modular design — not as a futuristic gimmick — but as a practical, proven approach that offers real benefits for clients across government, property, healthcare, and residential sectors. Yet, modular design still suffers from a bit of an identity crisis. It’s time to reassess what’s possible.
WHAT IS MODULAR DESIGN — REALLY?
Modular design isn’t just about prefabricated boxes or standardised components. It’s an approach that uses repeatable, scalable elements — whether entire rooms or structural frames — that can be assembled efficiently on or off-site. While architecture is inherently modular to some degree (think bricks, beams, or panels), today’s modular design refers more broadly to systems that prioritise flexibility, sustainability, and speed.
These modules might be prefabricated, 3D-printed, or built on-site, depending on the context. Standardisation can support cost efficiency, while clever design avoids a cookie-cutter aesthetic. It’s about flexibility, efficiency, and designing with the full lifecycle of a building in mind.
WHY IT MATTERS NOW
Australia’s development sector faces mounting challenges: housing shortages, labour constraints, climate resilience, and evolving user needs across a diverse range of sectors. Modular design presents a compelling response and critical opportunity.
SUSTAINABILITY WITH SUBSTANCE
Modular construction isn’t just efficient — it’s inherently more sustainable. By reducing waste, minimising transport emissions, and enabling smarter material use, it supports a circular economy approach that’s becoming non-negotiable in today’s built environment. Hassell’s First Building on Dharug Country in Western Sydney showcases a modular timber framing system conceived as a flexible ‘kit-of-parts’ — designed for easy disassembly, reuse, and low-carbon performance. Each component can be taken apart and repurposed at the end of its life, guided by embedded ‘material passports’ that track the origin, composition, and lifecycle of every element. It’s sustainability at a systems level, not just surface deep.
Similarly, the Michael Kirby Building at Macquarie University’s Wallumattagal Campus in Sydney integrates modular thinking into a highly adaptable research environment. The building’s flexible structural grid and modular façade system enabled faster construction, reduced site disruption, and lower material waste. Designed for longevity and adaptability, it can accommodate evolving academic and research needs without major structural overhauls, extending its usable life and reducing future environmental impact.
FASTER, SMARTER DELIVERY
Speed and certainty are a winning combination in today’s construction landscape — whether you’re building schools, housing, or civic infrastructure. Modular design allows key elements to be prefabricated while site works are underway, cutting down delivery times and reducing risk. Hassell’s Bidi Bidi Performing Arts Centre in Uganda is a smart example of this thinking in action.
Using just one type of brick, produced on-site with simple machines, the design team created a building with rich acoustic and lighting performance. Clever stacking patterns did the work; no extra materials were needed, just smart design. The unique geometry of the building’s roof was another challenge in itself. Using computational design, the team prefabricated each beam off-site in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, optimised them for transport, and assembled them on-site, removing the need for complex welding.
FLEXIBILTY AND FUTURE-PROOFING
Modular design is built for change. Structures can be reconfigured, expanded, or relocated as needs evolve, making them ideal for agencies and developers navigating shifting population demands or service delivery challenges. Hassell’s Mars Habitat project — developed for NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge — pushed this thinking to the extreme.
Designed for life on Mars, it combined prefabricated living modules with a 3D-printed outer shell made from local materials (local Martian regolith), creating a self-deploying, highly adaptable habitat. While the setting is otherworldly, the concepts of resilience, flexibility, and reuse apply directly to real-world conditions in both remote and urban Australia. It’s a bold reminder that modular design isn’t just efficient; it’s future-ready.
MAKING THE CASE FOR CHANGE
If modular design offers so many advantages, why hasn’t it become the norm? The answer isn’t simple, but it’s worth unpacking. Traditional building still dominates in Australia, partly due to cultural familiarity while fragmented regulations, supply chain limitations and outdated perceptions that modular means low quality or cookie-cutter design are still evident. There’s also the technical reality: modular systems need to meet strict fire, acoustic, and structural standards, especially across Australia’s varied climates and building codes. And then there’s the practical hurdle: scaling modular manufacturing — especially true volumetric systems — requires significant upfront investment, reshaping a project’s financial and risk profile.
Image, top from left to right. Michael Kirby Building, Photography: Nicole England, Bidi Bidi Performing Arts Centre, Photography: Mutua Matheka. NASA’s Habitat Challenge, designed by Hassell.
