Wednesday 31 March 2010

Louvre Development

We are currently exploring further refinement and development of the louvre systems. One of the more interesting options operates more like a fish-gill through bending the louvre rather than opening it. This rather elegant solution offers some very interesting advantages such as reducing the number of moving parts and also keeping the ends of the louvre sealed against the plywood click-beams to reduce unwanted drafts or leaking.

Sunday 7 March 2010

Click-Raft Proto02 recent developments









Proto02 is still under development and is starting to shape up well.
Based on the maximum height of 3m and plan area of 30m2 this live/work studio pavilion with 3 pods (kitchen pod/ shower wc pod/ store pod) is designed to side step full planning permission, similar to that of a garden shed, greenhouse, or garage and thus reduce costs and time radically.
Traditional cladding systems can be easily and inexpensively used instead of the louvre systems shown with plenty of scope for good insulation within the depth of the click-raft structure. A range of wall and roof material choices will also be available.
We have been exploring new metal connection details, in particular the louvre joint and design development of the click-leaves.
Jaap Dankert produced the images in 3d-studio with mental-ray on 64-bit. The publishing to web-3d is with google's o3d platform.



Pre-Fab Workshop

I attended a wonderful Kiwi Pre-Fab workshop last week, organised by Pamela Bell of Victoria University which involved many of the diverse players in the industry including industry, contractors, policy makers, designers, suppliers, and clients such as Housing New Zealand or Habitat for Humanity. It was a completely full house, with many more turned away. There was an extremely optimistic atmosphere for new beginnings in the industry with a clear agenda to reach a much broader public with more accessible, less expensive and higher quality solutions for Housing in the future. A range of examples especially from Europe and North America including the work and writings of Kieran Timberlake, and their involvement with other players from Europe and Australia at the MOMA exhibition with especially designed and built prototypes. Similar initiatives from LA were also shown, and a range of machinery and systems outlined. German, Austrian and Swiss examples were also shown with very impressive CNC factory production and equally impressive resulting buildings.

Pamela Bell's full 'Kiwi Prefab' thesis is available online at
http://researcharchive..vuw.ac.nz/handle/10063/1111?show=full
 
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