Walking through the Viva Homes by ATCO prototype in southwest Calgary feels like walking through any other modest show home. A 900-square-foot, three-bedroom unit in this fourplex is bright, modern and filled with staged touches that make it easy to imagine calling it home.
What visitors may not immediately realize is that this townhome was built in a factory. The project was made from six wood modules, each assembled off-site before being transported and craned into place. Building Viva’s 20- to 30-unit multi-family projects from start to move-in ready takes less than six months. Conventional construction methods for a comparable project usually take closer to 12 to 16 months.
Faster build times are only one of the advantages modular proponents point to. Advocates also cite cost clarity, temperature control, greater sustainability, reduction in construction waste and less disruption to surrounding neighbourhoods. In a city like Calgary, where population growth is putting pressure on housing supply, modular construction is increasingly being considered a way to build homes more efficiently — from backyard suites and townhomes to mid-rise apartment buildings.
Modular construction sits under the broader umbrella of prefabrication, where building components are manufactured off-site in controlled factory conditions and assembled on location. (Modular refers to entire units being constructed in a factory and then moved into place.) Despite decades of optimism about its potential, prefabricated construction has never broken into the mainstream in Canada. There’s a stigma surrounding prefab, conjuring up images of low-grade trailer parks.
Today, only around two per cent of homes in Canada are built using off-site methods. But, with a national housing crisis, ongoing labour shortages and political pressure to deliver housing faster, many in the industry believe this time could be different. Will those forces be enough to make prefabricated housing a significant part of Calgary’s future?
Modular is happening in Calgary
Viva Homes by ATCO is among the newest developers betting that modular construction can transform residential housing in Calgary. Launched in 2025, Viva Homes focuses on modular multi-family projects in urban areas. So far, Viva has delivered modular townhomes in Arbour Lake and Forest Lawn, with a combined 56 rental units. The modules were manufactured in ATCO’s Lethbridge facility and transported to Calgary on trucks.
ATCO is also behind larger modular builds through its ATCO Structures division, which operates 13 manufacturing locations across five countries, producing the mobile office trailers ubiquitous at work sites, as well as workforce housing camps, modular schools, offices and, increasingly, residential buildings.
Following numerous supportive housing projects in B.C. and Ontario, ATCO made a foray into mid-rise modular housing in Calgary in 2025, with 605 Studio West — a six-storey, 84-unit affordable housing development downtown. ATCO co-designed, fabricated and assembled the modules for Attainable Homes Calgary (AHC), a non-profit, City of Calgary-wholly owned subsidiary with a mandate to create affordable housing.
The downtown project started when AHC’s then-board chair suggested investigating modular construction for the small and technically challenging site, says Jaydan Tait, president and CEO of AHC.
“My reaction was one of skepticism,” admits Tait. But his concern wasn’t whether modular could be built. “So many people, when it comes to modular construction as a technique to build housing, think of it as a challenge of industrial capacity, and it isn’t. We have the industrial might, the factories, the people to build housing in [those] factories.”
The challenge, he says, lies in reducing risk for modular projects, from the capital costs that are more front-loaded than traditional construction to navigating planning approval processes that can significantly slow down builds. Tait boils down building any type of affordable housing to a simple formula: land plus money plus certainty equals housing. Without affordable land, reliable funding and predictable approval processes, no construction method can deliver housing at the pace that’s needed.
That said, AHC’s first modular project took about 10 months to complete, from the first shovel in the ground to occupancy of its 364-square-foot studio units. That’s less than half the time it took to complete a comparable conventionally built project nearby. Tait is now bringing modular housing to the Sunnyside Triangle site, an inner-city lot slated for affordable housing for more than a decade. ATCO Structures started manufacturing modules for the 198-unit development in June, with expected completion for mid-2027.
Barriers to modular
Inside ATCO Structures’ 200,000-square-foot Calgary manufacturing facility, the contrast with a traditional construction site is immediate. The factory is remarkably tidy, with waste sorted into labelled recycling bins rather than one big dumpster. Modules advance down two production lines much like cars in an assembly plant, with the facility’s 160 employees specializing in different stages of the process. By the time the modules leave the factory, they are nearly finished, down to toilet paper holders mounted on the bathroom walls. One module can be completed in 21 days, and there’s no such thing as a weather delay.
“We’re seeing the proof of what [modular] can do, which is accelerate the speed of construction, and that is of value to a developer, an owner, a municipality,” says Benoît Gagné, senior vice president of ATCO Structures.
So, what’s holding modular back from scaling? Gagné says there’s an embedded comfort and convenience to conventional construction. The industry has operated the same way for generations. Whereas modular, he says, “promotes the industrialization of construction in a way that hasn’t been done in the last 50 years.”
Research backs up that resistance from the construction industry, and points to other barriers, including regulatory inconsistencies, financial constraints and procurement challenges. Another hurdle frequently mentioned in the industry is stigma; modular construction is commonly associated with lower-quality trailers instead of permanent housing.
Gagné says the industry needs to do a better job of education to increase understanding that modular construction is an acceptable and functional method of building. “There’s nothing that is less quality than what would be in a conventional build,” he says.
In fact, modular does not automatically mean cheaper. “Currently, costs may be even slightly higher than conventional [construction], maybe cost neutral,” says Rhys Kane, director of business development at ROC Modular. The company, headquartered in Calgary, has a factory in the southern Alberta town of Bow Island, where 150 employees build modules that are trucked to sites across Canada and the U.S. for commercial and residential projects.
Kane says modular’s cost savings come from the shortened construction timelines — especially when you don’t have to work around Calgary’s unpredictable weather. “If you’re a private developer, that means quicker return on investment, because your project’s done and you can either sell or rent quicker. And if you’re an affordable housing provider, it means getting people into homes quicker,” he says.
Costs also improve when designs can be repeated, but residential projects often require enough customization to limit that advantage.
Historically, Alberta’s modular industry was heavily tied to oil and gas workforce camps, Kane says. But in the last few years, ROC Modular has completed more residential projects throughout B.C., as that province looks to modular housing as a way to accelerate supportive and affordable housing projects.
As market forces start to shift in Calgary, with population growth and labour shortages adding pressure, the growth in B.C.’s modular housing could bode well for potential growth in Alberta. “There’s so many reasons why you would go modular, but the pressures on the market have to be there,” Kane says.
Institutes and infrastructure
Another boost for the sector may come from Ottawa. Through housing policy and funding programs, the federal government is increasingly championing what it calls “Modern Methods of Construction,” a category that includes off-site approaches, such as modular and panelized construction, alongside on-site innovations and other emerging building technologies.
In February 2026, the new federal agency Build Canada Homes issued a national call for industry input on modern methods of construction, specifically modular, factory-built and prefabricated systems. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has also recently expanded its mortgage loan insurance offerings for prefabricated and modular homes, signalling greater institutional interest.
There’s a move away from pilot conversations toward execution at scale. “Governments have started to pay more attention to modular,” Kane says.
Scaling up, however, would require significant investment. An RBC report estimates that if modern methods of construction were to account for even 10 to 15 per cent of Canada’s annual housing needs, dozens of new factories would be needed across the country.
John Brown has seen enthusiasm for prefab housing come and go before. As co-founder and co-director at Garden Loft, a digitally enhanced prefabricated modular system for creating quality senior housing alternatives to traditional care facilities, and, as dean of the University of Calgary’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Brown has explored and researched how modular housing could work in Canada for years.
He points to how Canada has been experimenting with prefabricated housing, stretching back to the 1940s. That’s when the federal government built thousands of prefabricated “Victory Homes” for war workers and returning veterans. Brown thinks that modular might have more lasting power today.
“This go-around might be different,” he says. For him, however, the significance of prefabrication extends beyond speed or cost. It lies in the possibility of building entirely new kinds of housing.
Modular for aging-in-place
Garden Loft grew out of a UCalgary research project exploring how housing could better support people as they age. The company’s fully accessible prefabricated homes use an integrated digital safety and support platform that includes predictive wellness monitoring to help seniors live independently for longer.
Brown describes Garden Loft as the world’s first “full-stack home” — borrowing a term from the tech industry to describe housing where design, infrastructure and data systems are fully integrated. In addition to features such as fall-safe flooring and continuous grab rails, each unit is equipped with technology for passive, non-intrusive data collection.
Garden Loft is testing its new model of care through a new partnership with the Dr. Barrie Strafford Centre for Learning, Innovation & Quality, supported by Alberta Innovates. Sensors could detect a decrease in fridge use, for example, or changes in bathroom visits or sleep patterns, and then automatically flag them for review, potentially preventing complications such as dehydration, urinary tract infections or falls. The technology will be tested in Garden Loft’s first village project: a 10-home seniors’ development currently under construction in the small town of Bassano, 145 kilometres southeast of Calgary.
Brown says that this type of housing innovation is possible because of the way the homes are built — as modular homes. “We’re only able to integrate all of this technology because [the house is] something that we produce in a factory, as a finished unit,” he says.
While much of the current conversation around modular housing centres on speed and efficiency, Brown sees a different opportunity: factory-built housing enables housing that wouldn’t otherwise exist. Garden Loft shows that prefabricated housing could change what homes are capable of doing. As Brown puts it: “The house itself is the technology.”
All this to say, if modular housing can make new tech-forward housing possible, it can certainly play a role in helping to meet Calgary’s demand for typical and affordable housing. Time will tell if Calgary’s home-building industry and market are willing to give modular development its moment.
A Different Approach to the Prefab Factory
Local architect Dustin Couzens explores: why is the way we builed today almost unchanged from how we built 100 years ago? To that end, Modern Office of Design + Architecture (MODA), the Calgary firm Couzens co-founded, successfully applied for and received the national Prix de Rome in Architecture – Professional in 2023. The award allowed MODA to travel internationally to investigate construction innovation through the lens of affordability.
“We saw robots printing, robots welding, robots completely taking over a construction site,” Couzens says. Many of the futuristic technologies were fascinating, but not economical. A breakthrough came on a stop in London, England, at Automated Architecture (AUAR), a company deploying robotic micro-factories to construction sites to produce wall, floor and roof panels. “They’ve taken the factory out of the equation,” Couzens says. “If you can remove the factory, you remove that operational and [capital-expenditure] cost.”
The model could help solve what Couzens describes as “the prefab myth.” Prefabrication has long been promoted as a faster, cheaper way to build, yet many companies have struggled to deliver on that promise. It’s an enormous expense to build and operate permanent manufacturing facilities in a cyclical housing market. In AUAR’s model, a micro-factory is rented when needed, then moved as a whole elsewhere once the project is complete.
MODA and AUAR plan to demonstrate the concept in Calgary in the summer of 2027, with an affordable housing prototype functioning as both a demonstration of the technology and a public learning space.
Couzens says MODA has long worked to find “creative solutions to affordability.” He sees robotic micro-factories as an opportunity to rethink what affordable housing can be.
