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Has Perth become prefabricated?

Road Trip Day 23: 14th June 2007

Today I accompanied my Dad as he drove around the suburbs, just south of the Perth CBD, between jobs as a general home maintanance person. Through the course of the day we covered a fair bit of ground.

Something I noticed is that Perth seems to have really embraced 'prefabricated architecture'. Designing all shapes of building variations from your basic concrete box i.e. all the walls are made from prefabricated concrete slabs made to order. Everything from multi-storey apartments to huge commercial premises, all with unique styling, just to break up the expanse of concrete wall slabs.

Some buildings actually looked quite good whilst others displayed limited imagination beyond four walls. The only thing that lets these buildings down is that they are so obviously prefabricated. Which says something about the building not being quite so 'hand made' as they used to be, where a brickie would literally build a house brick by brick.

Perhaps it's just a sign of the times. Everything these days is mass produced. Why should buildings be any different. If they can be built quicker back at the factory with less time actually on site then why not? Cookie cutter buildings.

I guess the question is, where these days we try to preserve our heritage buildings, will these prefabricated buildings ever last that long? Will we try to preserve them or will we not care? Will modern, prefabricated architecture be forgotten except in photos?

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