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Hilton building a San Francisco-area hotel using modular construction

Prefab Hilton

Hilton building a San Francisco-area hotel using modular construction

Last week Hilton publicized that its forthcoming mid-range Home2 Suites hotel in South San Francisco is being built using modular construction. Pictured: the hotel being assembled (Courtesy Hilton)

Modular construction is continuing its slow rise across the U.S. Last week Hilton publicized that its forthcoming mid-range Home2 Suites hotel in South San Francisco is being built using the technique. At a press event, officials watched cranes raise building modules into place on the hotel’s site near the San Francisco International Airport. Hilton says that the hotel will be built faster thanks to off-site fabrication.

Hilton is not the first hotel chain to experiment modular construction. Last year Marriott announced that they would be using the method to build their new hotels in the U.S., and hotels in Europe have been using modular construction for years. According to Hilton, this would, however, be the first hotel to use modular construction in the Bay Area, a region that has shown interest in adopting the construction technique more generally. Last year Google’s parent company, Alphabet, announced that they would use modular construction to build housing on their growing Silicon Valley campus.

Modular construction has had a rocky record in the U.S. While more companies and city governments are exploring it, high-profile debacles like the B2 tower designed by SHoP Architects have tempered momentum. According to a modular builder quoted in a 2017 USA Today article, the technique still composes only about three percent of all construction starts in North America. Hotels, with their arrays of repetitive units, make a natural fit for modular construction, which takes advantage of economies of scale to reduce costs.

Hilton says that they were able to halve construction time for their new hotel and that it was built considerably faster than comparable non-modular projects in the area. They have not indicated whether they intend to continue using the strategy going forward.


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