Puke Ariki Click-Raft Fabrication at Stanley Factory

Things are getting exciting, the Puke Ariki exhibition launch is getting very close now. Fabrication at the Stanley Factory has happened like clock-work, all pieces were cut in one morning, and the 4.8 x 2.6 raft assembled shortly afterwards, we took some photos at the factory at the end of the week before it was dis-assembled and flatpacked to be transported to New Plymouth. Many thanks to Gary Caulfied, Sean Wood and team at Stanley, and Craig Floyd at Plytech for suppling the plywood.

                                      

click-raft is evolving...

click-raft is evolving.....  the click-leaf components can be understood as a kind of evolving cell, capable of learning new information, rather than simply as fixed prefab materials. We are working on developing generalised cell-types into a genetic code, partly to see at first glance what "family" they belong to, partly to unambiguously define them, and partly for future experiments with computational artificial evolution. We hope to show this new approach to fabrication architecture at the Puke Ariki Exhibition in New Plymouth NZ (opening December 1st) - both with a full size prototype and loads of puzzlekits for people of all ages to explore and test out. 

Studio Pavilion - delivery & site assembly

Things are getting very exciting for the next stage of click-raft production - here are photos of the Studio Pavilion on-route to site, and site assembled on the same morning. Just in time for winter - on the other side of our magic planet :)

Studio Pavilion & Carport Roof

Currently we are busy preparing material for the 'Kiwi Prefab: cottage to cutting edge' exhibition in New Zealand where click-raft will be shown as a new approach to architecture and building construction. At the same time a Studio Pavilion is being fabricated and pre-assembled in the Netherlands. Jaap has been hard at work developing his second 'real' click-raft project (the first is a carport roof - photos below). Both of these can be produced as standard package kitsets or modified to specific site conditions and cladding requirements as required.

FUTURE SCHOOLS UPDATE

Last week was a very exciting development following the Future Proofing Schools competition in Australia with a very important round table workshop organised by Melbourne University involving key players from the education, construction, architecture and research sectors across Australia. I was also invited to speak as Vice Chairman for PrefabNZ to share our experiences in New Zealand including the challenges and opportunities in setting up a new cross-industry platform. Amazingly there was a very similar ambition at this workshop across the whole group, and so there will be an interim working group set up to get this moving. It is a very exciting moment for both Australian and New Zealand construction industries since this need has been there for quite some time, and many of the barriers or challenges can now be addressed with the formation of a specific platform to help catalyse and seed a new kind of approach to realising high quality, low cost, fast delivery products and services. Exciting too is that click-raft offers all of this right now for a new generation of inhabitants, clients, investors, developers and providers (including full off-grid capability for autonomous operation).

From Christchurch Cathedral to desform 2012... towards An Evolutionary Architecture

At a critical time when the NZ government is trying to stimulate technological innovation not only in science, but in many other sectors including the construction industry, intriguingly this week combines a curious juxtaposition between the continuing debate on the future of Christchurch and its Cathedral on one hand, while on the other the desform conference takes place in Wellington... exploring digital interactive/movable technologies and typologies in architecture. Listening to Kathryn Ryan's talk with Philip Beesley raised a series of issues that could certainly become part of a broader discussion around how Christchurch could be rebuilt. Here is the link -
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2515962/feature-guest-philip-beesley

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9712678.stm

Many of these issues informed click-raft from the beginning, and many of these thoughts and experiments were informed early on by my ongoing conversations and collaborations with John Frazer, and more recently in collaboration with Jaap Dankert. It will be interesting over the coming period to see how many of these dimensions we can realise and further develop in habitable structures. In particular to make buildings more responsive and interactive with their environments, but also to provide the mechanisms where by they can learn, and thus adapt or tune to changing environmental conditions, in the sense that a sailing boat is tuned, and perhaps in future, in the deeper sense that a tree does, opening a path towards 'An Evolutionary Architecture'. 

Is this not the very moment to catalyse these potentials and to invest in exploring and developing these new capabilities and skillsets to engage in the massive challenges for Christchurch and other cities around the globe who have to address these challenges? 

... let alone the huge potentials for a new way of building in general. More deeply, is this not also a way forward towards a more sensitive and ecological engagement with our fragile planet ?  

One that makes both economic and ecological sense.

http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/publications/ea/intro.html

refer also to recent lectures by John Frazer http://vimeo.com/channels/310576

click-raft blog stats tops 1000 hits ... again

This month the launch of the click-raft puzzlekit has sparked very strong interest, this is pretty exciting news since click-raft has been in development since 2005 - so it's a long slow story, and the blog has only been in existance since mid 2009. Prior to this i used moleskin sketch-log books. But with the focused development during 2010/11 together with Jaap Dankert of the website and Types 02 (30m2 live/work unit), 03 (business unit) and then 04 (school unit) winning the sustainability award in the Future Schools Competition dramatically increased interest. But the puzzlekit has sparked just as much interest as winning the competition. So very soon I hope to have a simple and easy way to purchase puzzlekits for those interested, but for now just email me direct for your orders. Also coming is the Puke Ariki exhibition in New Plymouth, NZ at the end of this year which is going to be very exciting, and also larger scale structures, for innovation and technology companies. Large scale lego fabrication for big kids is just beginning to grow up ....  :)