Building comes together quickly with innovator’s system

It may seem hard to believe, but the accommodation building at Forest Lodge Orchard, on the outskirts of Cromwell, was built to 90-day weathertight status in just 13 hours.

Speak to the prototype building’s designer and Flexi House chief executive, Andre Heller, and he will tell you the speed of construction is just one metric in a system that has the potential to revolutionise the housing market in New Zealand.

Mr Heller, who hopes to accelerate the availability of affordable high-quality housing in New Zealand, graduated from Massey University with a degree in product design, then worked in marine and boat design in Invercargill before moving to London to work on large infrastructure projects for a multidisciplinary architectural firm.

"I learned a lot about design for manufacture and assembly — learning how to design for the repeatability and scalability of parts."

Returning to New Zealand, he started looking for his first home.

He imagined he would start with a smaller house, and over time add to it to meet his requirements. However, he soon found he could barely afford houses he described as "almost derelict".

This dilemma cemented his thinking around scalable housing and his "Flexi House" idea was born.

Architectural graduate Ricky Frost joined Flexi House and converted Mr Heller’s ambitious designs into workable drawings.

Mr Heller identified three key areas needing to be addressed in the housing sector in New Zealand — affordability, scalability and better-quality housing — to deliver the thousands of homes needed across the country.

After working through his concepts with a start-up incubator in Wellington, he visited Mike and Rebecca Casey at Forest Lodge Orchard, Mt Pisa.

The Caseys’ set-up is fossil-fuel-free, and they have reduced their power bills through the clever use of solar panels, battery storage and selling back to the grid at optimum times.

After talking to them and raising capital to fund research and development, Mr Heller developed a modular design system based on standardised components, and applied for the first building consent with the Caseys.

Mr Casey said he was impressed with the concept and was probably the lead investor in Flexi House’s first round of funding.

"I was concerned about the New Zealand housing market and that it wasn’t delivering what was needed," he said.

The Flexi House system can be best understood as a giant block set with standardised parts comprising five key components: floor, side wall, end wall, gable and roof panels that clip together then are screwed and bolted together.

The beauty of the system is the ease with which panels, and therefore rooms, can be added, changed or removed.

The accommodation block at Forest Lodge was designed with a large kitchen-dining-common area, two bathrooms with showers, a laundry and one bedroom-study.

The planned addition of more bedrooms was as simple as unbolting the end wall and gable panels, adding more side wall and roof panels and replacing the end wall and gable, Mr Heller said.

Constructed from locally sourced, renewable and environmentally friendly materials, including a timber exterior, the houses are carbon neutral.

tracie.barrett@odt.co.nz