Australia’s housing future – Performance and climate resilience of modular homes

Supervisors 

Prof. Priya Rajagopalan (RMIT University) 

The project 

Australia needs to build 1.2 million new homes in five years, highlighting the requirement for faster, low-emission construction methods like modular housing. Despite its potential for delivering quicker construction and reduced upfront carbon. Issues include historical negative perceptions about aesthetics and quality, as well as a lack of comprehensive data on long-term energy performance, initial and life cycle costs, climate resilience, and actual emissions.  

To address these barriers to uptake, this research will compare the lifecycle performance of modular houses against conventional homes. Subsequently, it will model the potential of modular construction to meet future housing needs within Australia’s carbon emission targets (operational and embodied energy) and explore how Australian homebuyers will respond to reliable lifecycle performance data when making housing choices.  

This research aims to provide clear, evidence-based insights that build confidence with housing providers and homebuyers, property developers, policymakers, product suppliers and manufacturers It will also help align policy and planning decisions to achieve a NetZero building sector by 2050.