Business Name: Canvas Barn Marine Trimming
Project Title: (f)route POD
Name Of Fabric: Radins AGT Supplier: Radins
Project Description: Our client won a competition in 2014 and obtained funding to produce a prototype "Glampster" - glamorous camping structure for a Social Enterprise Collective. The social enterprise collective is a regional group that embodies all things art, artists, local food, foraging, cartology and is looking to initiate the set up of glamping enterprise in the region.
Our client's winning entry was a bamboo framed POD, to be covered in recycled bill board fabric.
The client was committed to producing a prototype of the winning design to be displayed to the 2015 festival.
With the client unable to find a local fabricator capable of fabricating the skin for their POD, and they first contacted us about the project at the end of January 2015.
What is the purpose of this project? The client had a tight time schedule, with the POD launch at the festival on 28 February 2015.
The client also had a very limited budget, which had come from crowd-sourced funding as after the competition.
The bamboo frame for the POD had not been built, and it was being manufactured with the help of a team of volunteers some 4 hours away from our workshop.
The client requested a skin for the POD, that looked good, and was aesthetically pleasing.
What is unique or complex about this project? The client’s design called for a skin on a “garlic shaped” bamboo frame, with a door, 2 windows, an opening awning. The POD was to sit bolted on a base of 14 separate recycled pallets.
The construction of the frame included 8 ribs made up of 6 split bamboo strips, burned and bent with a jig to the required shape, then bolted together.
The POD is truly bespoke, with each panel entirely different in shape. This added to the complexity of construction, as each panel had to be patterned individually. The shape and design of the structure is complex with both convex and concave shapes in each panel. The desire to have a wrinkle free skin a base made from pallets set up on an uneven surface challenged our fabrication skills. The dynamics of the fabric shrinking and stretching made initial set up of the completed skin around the ribs challenging.
We received the frame for the POD about a week out from the festival.
The skin for the POD was completed and ready for photography before schedule.
Was there anything different or special about this project? The initial desire by the client to use recycled bill board fabric may have seemed a great idea.
The difficulty in using that fabric for complex curves would have made the POD very different from the POD the client has today, and probably would not have been achievable.
The use of loom state polycotton canvas for the prototype along with precise patterning and construction, while maintaining an "arty, bespoke feel" has been a success, with the POD receiving a lot of media attention and enquiry for purchase. This has meant there is good likelihood that the client is able to go into production in Australia for shipment locally and internationally.
What were the results of the project? Approximately 1000 people attended the festival, and many took the opportunity to use the POD as a space for people to meet, socialise and play.
The attendees were delighted with the POD, as many of them had contributed to the funding of the POD through crowd-source funding.
Interest in the POD for glamping has initiated new businesses.
The client has been invited to display POD to display at the the World Bamboo Congress in Korea later this year. Production of 2 new fully functional PODs, 3m and 4m, will be on display.
How did you contribute to the project: We were able to take a strict time frame on a project, and produce for the client a result which is receiving international attention.
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