European Applied Sciences #1 – 2013 Europäische Fachhochschule

194 EUROPEAN APPLIED SCIENCESAt present a number of regional programs on housing construction envisage development of territories in new boroughs using acomprehensive approach. As a rule, the large-panel method is the first option as the main house-building system. Acute housing problem isundoubtedly the most pressing for the majority of Russian citizens. Over 3 million families are accepted on the waiting list of the HousingRegister. Up to 70% of those on the waiting list — are families with low income. Nowadays, 1.2 million Russian citizens are homeless, 6 millionlive in run-down buildings unfit for human habitation, one third of the total population resides in conditions, which are below the housingstandards. Hence these people more often suffer from health problems, less often procreate, and die early. In 2011 the total floor area ofhousing stock in Russia amounted to 3288 million square meters, of which the share of run-down and unfit for human habitation was 3%(99 million square meters). Today a Russian citizen has on average a mere 23 square meters of housing floor area to live on. To compare: inEurope this indicator ranges from 30 to 40 square meters, in the USA — to over 50 square meters 1 .Architect K. Zhukov wrote in his article «On Architecture of Large-Panel Buildings», published in the journal «Architecture in the USSR», thatmass large-panel construction of 1–2 storey houses was organized at the Beryozovsky integrated house-construction factory during the SecondWorld War. Year 1948 may be called the beginning of experimental construction, in 1952 several highly productive factories for manufacturingprefabricated reinforced concrete were put in operation, and in 1958 the mass-volume industrial large panel house building commenced 2 .Large-panel houses were built by integrated house-construction factories. The efficiency of their operation was based on combiningand implementing of sequential interlinked processes in order to create the final product — ready for use houses. Gathering offormerly independent, economically and organizationally separate companies and enterprises under the roof of integrated house-constructionfactories produced higher motivations among the personnel and considerably raised responsibility for the end results of their work and increasedthe quality of houses built.By 1988 there were over 500 integrated house-construction factories in operation, with total building capacity of about 66 million squaremeters of housing floor area per year (to compare: 62.3 million square meters of housing floor area were built in Russia in 2011). In thoseyears the search continued for better and advanced methods for organization and management of integrated house-construction factories. Forexample, a number of design & construction amalgamations for large-panel house building were created in Moscow and Leningrad. Thanks totheir efficient activities the use of concrete box units in housing construction started to progress. Extensive development of rural constructionfactories and plant-construction factories began at the same time. These factories manufactured, transported and assembled structural unitsand components for agricultural and industrial buildings. About 200 integrated house-construction factories remained in the country afterthe collapse of the Soviet Union.Along with great achievements in mass large-panel house construction came the experience that revealed a number of drawbacks, majorof which are the following:— architectural inexpressiveness and monotony of residential areas built-up with large-panel houses;— no possibility to alternate the layout of flats;— operational drawbacks, such as, higher noise level and penetration of air and moisture through joints.Currently in Russia the share of pre-fabricated large-panel house building fell on average to 13.4%, and in some regions — to 5% andbelow. In 2012, about half of 409 existing integrated house-construction factories are in business. They jointly build 10–12 million squaremeters of housing per year, while their annual building capacity is 35–40 million square meters. The potential for increase in Russian housingconstruction is 25–35 million square meters. However, only 30 of 210 working integrated house-construction factories have contemporarytechnology at their production facilities. 3In our view, the apparent abandonment of large-panel house construction, which is currently taking place, is unjustified. Consideringthe fact that Russia has already got the industrial basis for large-panel house construction, failure to reconstruct, update and further developthis technology would be a bad mistake in the process of accomplishing the national priority project “Affordable and Comfortable Housingfor Russian Citizens” and federal target program “Housing”. A sum of 2357.5 million roubles, or 62.2% of the allocated limit, was spent in2011 within this federal target program “Housing 2011–2015” 4 .Such current condition of large-panel house construction industry is attributed mainly to the fact that existing technology can no longersatisfy the demand of the real estate market. Most of integrated house-construction factories are equipped with worn out old-fashionedmachinery and thus doomed to manufacture outdated products. Therefore modernization of integrated house-building factories must be themain objective. According to Goskomstat (Russian State Committee for Statistics), the wear rate of fixed assets in construction industry in2011 was 43.3%, the share of worn out fixed assets was measured at 11.5%.Studies of contemporary international best practice in construction, in particular German, French, Italian, Czech and Chinese experience,provide grounds to conclude that the idea of prefabricated house-building should not be given up completely. In European countries outsideRussia, the majority of factories produce a rather broad diversity of types of large-panel houses varied in layout of apartments and architectureof façades. Currently manufactured precast reinforced concrete products are of superior quality in most cases, including front surfaces of panels,engineering facilities and interior finish. This is a result of high quality component materials and up-to-date equipment, used in constructionof large-panel houses, as well, as stringent quality requirements.Chart 1 represents some trends in housing construction in Russia and Germany.Chart 1. — Comparative data for Housing Construction in Russia and GermanyCountries 2000 2005 2008 2009 2011Average Floor Area of Built Apartments (m 2 )Russia 81 85 83 85 79Germany (living floor area) 108 121 119 118 119Housing Construction per 1,000 Inhabitants (million m 2 )Russia 207 304 449 419 436Germany 554 354 255 230 2331 Construction in Russia. 2012. Federal State Statistics Service. E-resource: [http://www.gks.ru]2 Zhukov K. Architecture in the USSR. № 9, 1952.3 Housing Construction/Scientific - Technical Journal, № 7, М., 2012 , pages 2–8.4 Construction in Russia. 2012. Federal State Statistics Service. E-resource: [http://www.gks.ru]