Making the “Van Boat”

For making the Van Boat our team set ourselves out with a two piece project, the one square meter house and a pontoon base structure. The pontoon has the primary function of keeping the house afloat in water. The plan was so that once both pieces were built, the house would sit nicely on top of the pontoon platform, which leads me to the construction of the pieces.

For the pontoon structure, we got many empty bottles that could hold from 20-100 liters of water. We then built a rectangular build that would enclose the bottles in an organised fashion. To increase the chances of the house to float, we added miscellaneous left over tubs and bottles, which was woven into the secure rectangle form using rope. (Pictures to come in the next blog!)

For the house, we stuck to the instructions and kept the same core frame. We then made small variations in the measurements of the doorway/entrance, number and size of windows and number of structural supports – all to suit the requirements for successful and confortable boat navigation. Lastly, the paneling also changed dew to the changes in measurements. There were some difficulties and confusion but we managed past it..

The building took a total of two intense days. Our team had to be organised and have a unified understanding of our continuously changing plan of action.

We are now in the final stages of the painting of the Van Boat and will test run it later today. We will blog our results as soon as they are in..! (tbc)

The “Van Boat” Concept

Hi! We’re Irish Product Design students from the Nation College of Art and Design (NCAD) which is situated in Dublin. From the 22nd -25th of April 2013, our class and representatives from the Rediscovery Centre (Ireland) took on Van Bo’s One Square meter house project. Our team (Aisling Burke, Patrick Horigan , Timmy O’Sullivan, Dylan Mckimm & Rob Wylie) was one of a total five teams.

Our first day was an very open brainstorm of concepts. It was clear from the get-go that our best and favourite ideas were quite adventurous, fun, and interactive. As a team, we chose a boat house concept, or as we later came to call it..

the “Van Boat”… B-)

The concept and origin of the idea is based of The Viking Splash tour that shows tourists “our home”. The tour teaches them our city’s history by driving on both land and water. From this, we established that our house would have to have the same capabilities of maneuvering itself on land and water.

On the second day, we discussed the concept with Van Bo and from there, developed the idea so that the boat would still preserve homely qualities but would still break social barriers by showing tourists/other people around in this boat. The next step for us was to then start building…(tbc)