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
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.
