Dear Reader,

In Oss they put out a small tribune so neighbours could watch houses arrive by crane.

That is this week's picture of modular building in Europe. Not a factory tour. A row of seats facing a plot, while 39 finished apartments swing in from a truck.

Beside it sit a five-storey timber stack that does not look modular, a priced garden home for Irish back gardens, a design contest for nineteen flats on Gran Canaria, a Valencian protocol for a plant that would make 6,000 homes a year on land still waiting for its zoning, and a municipal container shelter that burned to the ground in one morning.

Every story links to its source and ends with my take, clearly marked.

Lars

From Tuesday 3 November, BrabantWonen and its building partner Barli started placing 39 flex homes on the Meidoornlaan in Oss. The apartments leave the factory largely finished, travel by truck and are lifted onto the plot by crane. For the placement days the client and the builder put up a small public tribune so people could watch.

The scheme is two three-storey buildings: 24 two-room flats and 15 three-room flats, all social rent. The homes are relocatable. They are meant to stay on the Meidoornlaan until 2039 and then move to another site in Oss. Letting through Thuispoort starts on 7 December. First tenants are expected in February 2027. Tenants keep their waiting-list time while they live there.

Xylino in Almere Poort is 103 homes in stacked three-dimensional LVL modules, reported in detail on 3 November. Housing corporation De Alliantie, contractor Koopmans Bouwgroep and module maker geWOONhout put five storeys of Laminated Veneer Lumber modules on a half-sunken concrete parking base. Het Houtblad calls the five-storey LVL stack a first.

The project uses 436 prefabricated timber modules. Metsä Wood, which supplied Kerto LVL, says crews place eight to twelve modules a day and finish a residential block in about four weeks. CNC tolerances are held to 0.5 millimetres. The reported environmental performance figure for the scheme is an MPG of 0.479. Acoustic decoupling between modules and extra floor mass were designed in from the start. From the street, the curved galleries and thermally modified spruce cladding are meant to hide the module joints.

Framespace and Homely have launched Móro, a garden-home brand aimed at Ireland's Class 3A planning exemption for detached rear dwellings of 32 to 45 square metres. The homes are designed, made and installed by Framespace in Longford on its NSAI Agrement-certified light gauge steel system, and are sold as permanent dwellings that meet Building Regulations, not as cabins.

Launch prices: Móro Studio at 32 square metres from 95,000 euros, Móro One at 45 square metres from 135,000 euros, and Móro One with office from 155,000 euros. The companies target about twelve weeks from deposit to installation, with the factory build running in parallel with foundations and services on site. Standard pricing is said to include foundations, normal utility connections, delivery, installation and a certification pack, subject to survey. Framespace employs about 150 people and says it plans to add about 100 for the venture. Budget 2027 extends Rent-a-Room Relief to qualifying detached garden homes and raises the annual tax-free rental threshold from 14,000 to 16,000 euros from January 2027.

On the morning of 29 October a fire started in a room of the municipal residential shelter on the Südring in Wentorf, near Hamburg. The shelter was built from residential containers for refugees and homeless people. According to NDR and the police, all 20 residents got out unhurt. The fire spread fast from container to container. All 30 residential containers burned and are uninhabitable. The cause is still under investigation. Residents were housed elsewhere.

Cecotec and the town of Almussafes have signed a protocol of actions for an industrialised-housing plant next to the Juan Carlos I industrial estate, in sector ZND-IN1 of the pending PGOU revision. Casas inHAUS is the modular partner. Its system is three-dimensional steel-and-concrete modules. The company page puts the planned investment at 150 million euros and the projected capacity at up to 6,000 homes a year, or about 500,000 square metres. It talks about up to 4,000 jobs, direct and indirect, and a site of more than 515,000 square metres once the plan is approved.

They describe a 'grado 6' industrialisation, with about 95 percent of the building made in the factory, and an average delivery of about three months. El Español reported the same figures on 27 October. The protocol is not a building permit and not a financed final investment decision. The municipal plan still has to finish its revision.

The Government of the Canary Islands and the town of Ingenio have signed a convention for 19 industrialised homes for affordable rent aimed at people aged 18 to 35. The municipal plot in El Carrizal is about 565 square metres, provided without a ground rent. Planned built area is about 1,583 square metres. Homes are to be between 60 and 120 square metres. Construction is pencilled from 20 March 2027 to 20 January 2028, with an estimated works budget of 2.53 million euros and a ten-month build.

A design contest coordinated by CEICA takes proposals until 15 November. The brief asks for industrialised solutions, including hybrid systems that mix two-dimensional prefabricated parts with traditional work, and it may favour components made in the Canaries. The winning firm finances and runs the homes for up to 75 years. Officials say a similar deal with Santa Cruz de La Palma is next.

Netherlands. Daiwa House Modular Europe, the municipality of Hoogeveen and BPD SmartBuilds marked the start of 40 mid-rent modular homes on the Griendtsveenweg on 29 October. Modules come from the Eemshaven factory while the site is prepared in parallel. The plot is leased for 35 years. Daiwa says about 80 percent of components can be reused afterwards. Handover is aimed at May 2027.

UK and Europe. Portakabin closed a senior secured refinancing of about 1.865 billion pounds on 7 October, confirmed later by counsel as an infrastructure-style, investment-grade platform across banks and institutions (source). Antin Infrastructure Partners is a shareholder. The company leases modular buildings mainly into education, healthcare and social infrastructure.

Spain. Sociedade de Vivenda Pública de Galicia has opened the works tender for 92 public homes in Narón, A Coruña (expediente VPG-2026-0082), with a contract budget of 16,313,452.30 euros. Offers are due by 23 December 2026. The project design uses industrialised techniques including a bolted steel structure and prefabricated slabs, with architecture by Vier Arquitectura.

Germany. Stadtwerke Stuttgart commissioned an Energiemodul for a 58-home tower in Weilimdorf on 29 October. Four heat pumps sit in a timber-clad container on a prepared foundation. The company says the module was on its base in under ten minutes and connected to the building within half a day, replacing gas. A neighbour block of 57 homes has run a similar module since autumn 2025. Output is put at roughly 3.5 to 4 kilowatt-hours of heat per kilowatt-hour of electricity.

Netherlands. At Xylino, Metsä Wood and the project team describe every component carrying a digital twin reachable by QR code, CNC machining to 0.5 millimetre tolerances, and acoustic build-ups that add olivine split for mass between timber modules. That is factory detail, not brochure language.

EU. The Horizon EIC project PTAH (CORDIS 101307365) started on 1 September 2026 with a grant of 3,994,259.96 euros. It plans robotic on-site micro-factories and digital twins for timber housing, coordinated by the University of Sheffield, running to 31 August 2029.

436. Prefabricated timber modules in the Xylino scheme in Almere, as reported by Metsä Wood (source).

1.865 billion pounds. Approximate size of Portakabin's new senior secured financing platform, closed 7 October 2026 (source).

95,000 euros. Starting price for the 32 square metre Móro Studio garden home in Ireland (source).

9 November 2026. Comment deadline for Länder and associations on Germany's Gebäudetyp E draft law (Federal Building Ministry).

15 November 2026. Deadline for design proposals in the Canarias industrialised-housing contest for Ingenio (source).

17 November 2026. Deadline for the CASA 47 design tender for affordable housing on Calle Segundo Arce in Logroño, estimated at 525,074 euros, with industrialisation weighted at 10 percent (source).

Open public notices for modular, container and related industrialised building work. Deadlines below are after 10 November 2026. Each line links the official notice. Values appear only where the notice states them.

• Germany. Gebäudewirtschaft Mainz, rental of a two-storey container complex with four classrooms, 1 Dec 2026.
• Germany. Stadt Krumbach (Schwaben), rental of a container facility still to be built, including later dismantling, 27 Nov 2026.
• Germany. Bezirksregierung Münster, framework for general contractors for refugee accommodation in container construction across North Rhine-Westphalia, estimated 243 million euros (notice also states a 300 million euro figure), requests to participate by 17 Nov 2026.
• Germany. Landeshauptstadt Hannover, new school building in timber modular construction with a two-court sports hall and outdoor works, 30 Nov 2026.
• Netherlands. Gemeente Uithoorn, temporary classrooms for basisschool de Vuurvogel, rented and later removed, 9 Dec 2026.
• Belgium. Gemeente Sint-Pieters-Leeuw, purchase of containers to house a Chiro youth group, including the environmental permit, 16 Nov 2026.
• Belgium. KOBA Noordkant, the Catholic school board in the Antwerp diocese, placement and rental of modular classrooms, a movement room and sanitary units, 3 May 2027.
• Norway. Kristiansand kommune, hire of barrack modules for Tordenskjolds gate school, 25 Nov 2026.
• France. Département du Finistère, rental and installation of modular buildings for the canteen of the Coat Mez college in Daoulas, 23 Nov 2026.
• France. Communauté de Communes Val de Gray, five light leisure homes for the Colombière campsite in Pesmes, 16 Nov 2026.
• France. Ville de Caen, wooden chalets, mainly for its Christmas market, tendered again, 10 Dec 2026.
• Spain. Gobierno de Canarias / Ayuntamiento de Ingenio, design contest for an industrialised affordable-rent prototype of about 19 homes, proposals by 15 Nov 2026, estimated works 2.53 million euros.
• Spain. CASA 47, architectural design of 102 affordable rental homes at Calle Segundo Arce in Logroño, estimated at 525,074 euros, with industrialisation weighted at 10 percent, 17 Nov 2026.

If you end up on a tribune watching a house land, send me a photo. I read every reply.

Thanks for reading. If this was useful, please forward it to anyone who builds, buys or approves modular housing. You can also connect with me through the links below, and if you have a question, just hit reply. I read every message.

Best regards,
Lars