Shelter
Documenting a personal quest for non-toxic housing.
Saturday, May 8, 2004
All The World's A Stage
I've been in correspondence recently with the Netherlands offices of the Prolyte company concerning the use of their theatrical truss products for housing. As those readers of my gallery section know, I've long been interested in the use of theatrical trusses as a modular building system for non-toxic housing because they are made with paint-free aluminum and offer the benefits of easy transportation, quick low-skill assembly and disassembly, and very high structural performance. Prolyte's products are especially well suited to this because of a very convenient box corner design that offers high strength column integration and easy 'pass through' connection for trusses when using different panel materials. And the assortment of accessories made by different companies for use with these trusses is huge, offering many possibilities for adaptive reuse. But I've never been able to get anyone in the show-biz industry to discuss this with me. Finally deciding to go to the source, I was pleased to find that the Prolyte people didn't think this was all that strange an application and their engineers quickly pointed me to the appropriate truss model line to use for this; the H40V multi-purpose line. This particular product line has apparently already been certified for building use under the strict German building regulations. Their engineers also were kind enough to provide me with roof loading calculations for the simple home design featured in my Final Project design page and the numbers suggest a very respectable performance for the flat roofed design.
Documenting a personal quest for non-toxic housing.
Saturday, May 8, 2004All The World's A Stage
I've been in correspondence recently with the Netherlands offices of the Prolyte company concerning the use of their theatrical truss products for housing. As those readers of my gallery section know, I've long been interested in the use of theatrical trusses as a modular building system for non-toxic housing because they are made with paint-free aluminum and offer the benefits of easy transportation, quick low-skill assembly and disassembly, and very high structural performance. Prolyte's products are especially well suited to this because of a very convenient box corner design that offers high strength column integration and easy 'pass through' connection for trusses when using different panel materials. And the assortment of accessories made by different companies for use with these trusses is huge, offering many possibilities for adaptive reuse. But I've never been able to get anyone in the show-biz industry to discuss this with me. Finally deciding to go to the source, I was pleased to find that the Prolyte people didn't think this was all that strange an application and their engineers quickly pointed me to the appropriate truss model line to use for this; the H40V multi-purpose line. This particular product line has apparently already been certified for building use under the strict German building regulations. Their engineers also were kind enough to provide me with roof loading calculations for the simple home design featured in my Final Project design page and the numbers suggest a very respectable performance for the flat roofed design.
This looks like a very strong possibility. With these kinds of trusses the parts count for a home becomes very small and the trusses can be readily stored in adverse environments. It's still not clear what the cost for the use of this truss would be. I must still wait for word from the US distributors as to pricing and availability. But theatrical truss is fairly ubiquitous and there's strong possibility of finding most, if not all, a house would need on the used theatre equipment market. Of course, that would call for help from those same show-biz insiders that have been refusing to talk to me for some time.
7:39:07 PM 