Kristoff,

I was looking through some of plans on your website, and especially the curved walls made me think if you are aware of hempcrete. It's quite an amazing building material that handles curves beautifully. This video provides a good introduction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVlYDWr31fQ&feature=player_embedded

Thanks again, Fred

Thanks Kristoff! I really appreciate your support. Indeed similar to tinker toys, but without the fixed angular constraints.

I think your money is safe, as I don't believe I'll make the goal, but doing Kickstarter is a fun process, and I hope the project gets some more people thinking about new approaches to building toys.

Cheers,

Fred

Hi All,

Some of you may remember my posting here about Quirky selecting my building toy idea for development.

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=179&t=39607

Quirky eventually decided to go in another direction for a building toy.

Since what I really want is to have a building toy available that allows for the easy creation of highly-curved organic shapes I started a Kickstarter campaign to develop the toy as an open-source project.

If you are interested in this sort of thing please take a look.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/804215203/developing-a-21st-century-open-source-building-toy

Thanks,

Fred

PS For you SketchUcation old timers, I blogged about my latest design work here. http://fredbartels.posterous.com

Wo3Dan,

Thanks for sharing your concerns about compression and tension stresses at the joints. I have them too. It's why I'm proceeding slowly and with small projects first. I think steel hubs and joist hangers will go a long way toward addressing this issue. I'd love to know the math to calculate the stresses.

This small dome http://dws.editme.com/files/JulyAugust2009/IMG_5882.jpg & http://dws.editme.com/files/JulyAugust2009/roof%20beams.jpg is going strong even with poorly designed posts and PVC hubs with joists attached via end grain screws. It has had some major snow accumulation and has not shown any deformation.

Have you seen some of the bigger grid shell structures? http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20061011/back-on-the-grid
I suspect the stresses in them are similar to those in my framing system.

Cheers,

Fred

Thanks for the replies.

Roger. I'm going to contact the company next week. I'll let you know what I discover.

mitcord: Thanks for the perspective. If I used the membrane it would be as the waterproofing layer for a green roof.

tim: Love the idea of a beautifully crafted metal panel roof, but, as you note, that's for a different economic class than mine.

Krisidious: Been working on the curved roof concept for a long time. See this 2008 thread here on SketchUCation. http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=8723&start=0 After 30 years working in schools I'm taking a gap year and working on a number of projects, including moving forward with the curved roof ideas. I'm taking classes up at Yestermorrow, a funky design/build school in Vermont http://www.yestermorrow.org/ with that goal in mind.

I've made a lot of progress, but it is a long process. I built the prototype in the images below in the last few months. The metal joist hangers are aluminum and the hubs are PVC. This is just a model. In a full-scale structure I'd use steel. (If any of you have expertise in using light-weight steel in home construction I'd love to have a conversation!) Any thoughts much appreciated.

Fred

Discovered Neptune Coatings WetSuit roofing membrane system today: http://neptunecoatingscorp.com/. Thinking it might be a waterproofing solution for the complexly curved roofs I'm developing. http://dws.editme.com/

Wondering if any of you folks have experience with it?

Thanks,

Fred

@unknownuser said:

How the hexagonal yellow part and the hexagonal blue part are joined between them?

With a nut and bolt, probably made of plastic. The SketchUp model doesn't show this as it was made at an early conceptual stage. One advantage of this approach is that the hubs can be stacked which allows for the easy creation of irregular space frame structures like this. http://dws.editme.com/files/JulyAugust2009/space%20frame%202.jpg

One question that keeps coming up is how to skin the framework. Since the toy is designed to create TINs, all the triangles in the frame will likely be different. I haven't come up with a good solution.

Fred

To Boofredlay: Thanks!

As I've noted in the previous posts, I have a building toy idea http://www.quirky.com/ideations/82529 that is making its way through the potential product process at Quirky. http://www.quirky.com/

If you are interested in building toys, design as a social process, or you're just curious, please consider checking out the design and possibly providing some input.

http://www.quirky.com/projects/1397

Thanks for considering.

Fred

Quirky is currently doing some market research about this proposed building toy.

They are looking for some input about how possibly to market the toy. Any input from the SketchUp community -using the link below- would be very much appreciated!

http://www.quirky.com/projects/1085

Thanks,

Fred

Hey Roger,

Thanks for your comment.

Sorry about the slow response. For the past three weeks I was up at http://www.yestermorrow.org/ doing a three week intensive design/build course and was totally focused on the work for the course.

Regarding improving the toy idea, the cool thing about Quirky is that you can make suggestions to improve a product idea and if they are used then you can earn a percentage of the profits if the product ever makes it to market, so if you want to share your ideas have at it... http://www.quirky.com/products/168-product-0168

Warm regards,

Fred

@roger said:

Fred, I really missed your contributions. What about doing a second type of connector that would allow you to connect at acute angles? It might be an interesting addition to the kit. Also why does it have to be a toy? As soon as I saw it I was thinking little shade structures to keep my plants from frying in the desert heat.