Two routes to industrialising German housing

Billed as a session on rethinking micro-living through robotics and technology, the closing "Future Talk" at Heuer Dialog's Jahreskongress Temporäres Wohnen gathering in Berlin broadened into a larger question: why German construction remains too slow, too expensive and too dependent on a shrinking workforce. Moderated by Benjamin Oeckl of BelForm, the conversation paired George Salden of Capital Bay GmbH with Wulf von Borzyskowski of All3 Construction Germany — one betting on factory-built modular housing at industrial scale, the other on robotics deployed directly on site.

Von Borzyskowski's starting point was that small footprints expose the limits of conventional building methods more clearly than any other segment: speed, quality, cost and flexibility all under pressure at once. Micro-living, in his framing, is less a niche than a stress test for whether construction can finally be done differently.