A Futuro house is a round, prefabricated house designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen, of which fewer than 100 were built during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The shape, reminiscent of a flying saucer, and the structure’s airplane hatch entrance has made the houses sought after by collectors. Importantly, it was an early use of fibreglass technology. Photo Credit: Mona/Jesse Hunniford
Operating from its factory in Moolap, just two hours south west of Melbourne, Dulhunty Poles is a manufacturer and distributor of a unique range of innovative engineered geopolymer cement poles for a raft of applications, but particularly for utility power.
A prosaic and mundane necessity, access covers have played an important role in civil works projects for centuries, protecting a world of pipes, wires, conduits and drainage systems below our walkways, driveways, roads, freeways, docks, wharfs and runways, while providing convenient access for maintenance workers. As technology and community expectations and needs have grown, the humble access cover has until recently struggled to evolve.
Australia’s electricity networks extend about 918,000 km with more than seven million power poles – most of which are above ground and extend deep into the bush. These sections can be hard to access, expensive to maintain and are easily severed from the main grid by natural disasters.
If you take public transport, pound the pavement or even simply cross the street for your morning coffee, you will have noticed the distinctive tiles with raised spots and strips imbedded into the asphalt or concrete of public walkways.
Beneath New Zealand’s largest city, magic is happening: Watercare, the city’s water utility is building a 14.7km underground wastewater tunnel from Mãngere Wastewater Treatment Plant, across the Manukau Harbour to the central city. It’s the largest and most complex wastewater infrastructure project in New Zealand history
The civil construction company, ALLROADS proposed to replace a standard concrete and steel bridge design with a Wagners Composite Bridge design. The lightweight composite bridge then allowed the project team to replace the complex abutment substructure with a simplified pile and headstock substructure design.
Rudi’s love and respect for advanced materials can be seen throughout the house in spectacular one-off composite features. The internal stairs are made from wafer-thin prepreg carbon fibre. An overhanging window box is made from carbon fibre and bonded in place with AEC Polymer’s SAF methacrylate adhesive. The kitchen benchtop is a precision CNC machined slab of titanium, featuring a subtle radius and hand-shaped bevel which he had sand-blasted to a luminous satin surface.
The diversion of 600 metres of the North Yarra Main sewer pipe featured filament wound composite maintenance shafts designed, engineered and made by Victorian based firm, Corrosion Technology Australia Group (CTA).
In its Botany, NSW laboratory, allnex has developed a resin specifically designed for CIPP applications. Polyplex 916 has been formulated to facilitate high cross link density in the cured composite liner. This improves overall chemical and hydrolysis resistance and can result in faster cure rates and shorter curing cycles, dependent on sufficient heat input during the CIPP fabrication process.
