theCASTLE: Week 3

Week 3:

At the start of week 3, we had a presentation from Steven who was partly involved in the design of a light-weight accommodation pod for Tarkine Trails bushwalking company, who run 6 day walks through the Tarkine National Park, which is in north west Tasmania. The pod proposals for Tarkine are needed because the frequency of walks is increasing in the Park and environmental degradation is occurring through the tent camping. The pod had to be something that would sit above the ground and provide a tent enclosure on a solid, but small footprint, and not lose the best things about camping in the wilderness.

Steven went through the design process for designing the pods, and how they came up with the sketch up rendered pictures of their prototype that is yet to be built. The construction method apparently decided upon was a steel frame component set that packed together with a very solid steamed plywood curve for the inside lining, and fabric canvas walls to be under a 500kg weight for helicoptering into the National Park.

We all thought that the presentation and ideas behind the pod design were really good, but that maybe the designers were trying to delight their own aesthetic sensibilities with a steamed plywood curve when they actually didn’t need to, maybe another proposal with fewer problems would be more applicable. We left the presentation wondering how much we could apply that simplicity of design to The Castle, as it has a lot more functions needed and much more frequent use than the proposed pods.

In the afternoon we went for a drive to visit Ron Carter Caravan world out towards Evandale and the airport outside of Launceston. When we got there the weather was particularly inclement and we were given quite a dressing down by the store manager who met us, about not walking our muddy wet feet inside all the caravans. After his long and minimalist introduction about the business the rain had stopped and he was more inclined to let us tramp around.

We found some really nice caravans and some really revolting designs, generally depending on the exorbitant price and revolting floral interiors. The more ingenious ones we appreciated more, such as the caravans that folded down or expanded by flipping parts up. One such was a triangular topped caravan that became a very tall rectangular volumed space once expanded. The prices of caravans and motor homes was incredible and sometimes the same price as a house, around $280 000. We took home some plans and services details from the caravans, but overall they do not use the vertical dimension that much –something we would like to explore.