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John M's avatar

They wouldn't have written this in the official reports, but one wonders if this was partly to outdo the perceived success of the Khrushchev prefab building boom...

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Brian Potter's avatar

Thanks for the link. I actually used this source for this edition - it's interesting since it was written while Breakthrough was still going on, so it remains optimistic about how it might turn out.

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Patrick Jensen's avatar

Might we eventually see a follow-up comparing Operation Breakthrough to similar efforts in other countries and why prefabricated construction failed or succeeded in those cases?

The excellent Postwar building materials project notes for example, that while heavy prefab systems were popular in France between the 1950s and 1970s, they never really gained much ground in Belgium for various reasons.

http://postwarbuildingmaterials.be/material/heavy-prefab-systems/

This is in stark contrast to e.g. the Finnish market, where the BES system (Betonielementtistandardi, lit. "Concrete element standard"), is to this day wildly successful, with a 3/4 market share in residential and commercial high rise construction.

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