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Samsung Electronics has identified Australia among the overseas markets it is considering for its AI modular home business, as its partnership with Korean manufacturer Space Factory moves connected-home technology further into factory-built housing.
Samsung Electronics is considering Australia as part of the international expansion of its AI modular home platform, providing a potentially significant connection between one of the world’s largest technology companies and factory-built housing. (main image: Samsung’s AI Modular Home in Hwaseong, South Korea, brings factory-built housing together with the company’s connected-home technology across approximately 330 square metres. Credit: Yonhap News Agency.)
The Korean company formally launched the Samsung AI Modular Home in June through a partnership with timber modular manufacturer Space Factory, known in Korea as 공간제작소.
Importantly, Samsung is not manufacturing the structural housing modules itself. Space Factory designs and manufactures the timber modular buildings, while Samsung’s appliances, connected devices and SmartThings platform are incorporated into the home from the design and factory-production stages.
Housing treated as a manufactured product
Space Factory says more than 80 per cent of each house is produced offsite before modules are transported for assembly and installation.
Its manufacturing operation combines AI-assisted design with automated production systems and has stated capacity of around 1,700 homes annually.
Korean reports from the company’s Hwaseong facility describe an automated line capable of producing approximately one housing module per hour. Four modules can be combined to create a dwelling of around 66 square metres.
That manufacturing approach allows Samsung equipment and connected-home systems to be integrated before the dwelling leaves the factory rather than installed as a separate package after construction.
Customers can specify Samsung air-conditioning, refrigerators, televisions and other appliances alongside more than 20 SmartThings-compatible products including lighting, cameras and security devices.
The intention is to deliver a connected home in which appliances and systems are already integrated when the dwelling is completed.
Samsung has also indicated that detached housing is only the initial application.
The company has said it intends to extend the AI modular home concept into buildings of four storeys and above and ultimately into apartments, offices, accommodation and other building types.
Samsung has also outlined a target of supplying 10,000 AI modular homes within three years.
Watch Space Factory’s “Houses are manufactured, not built?”
Australia identified for possible expansion
Australia has been specifically identified as one of the international markets under consideration.
In a Korean media report published on 24 June, Lee Shin-young, a group leader within Samsung Electronics’ Digital Appliances division, said the company was examining overseas business expansion into Europe, Australia and Hawaii.
The report stated that Samsung was also looking for partner companies that could support that international expansion.
Samsung has not yet detailed how an Australian expansion would be structured, but its identification of Australia as a potential market — and its search for international partners — puts the local modular sector clearly within the company’s expansion thinking.
What is significant is the model Samsung is building.
Rather than Samsung becoming a conventional housebuilder, the company is using industrialised construction as a platform through which appliances, controls, digital services and connected-home technology can be incorporated into a dwelling during design and manufacture.
For Australia’s offsite construction sector, the more interesting question may therefore be not whether Samsung starts manufacturing houses here, but whether an Australian modular manufacturer eventually becomes part of the platform.
Find Space Factory HERE
