Prefab Construction Enables Skateboarding on Water!

The great thing about prefab architecture is that it can be built somewhere and placed elsewhere. Actually prefabricated construction can be placed anywhere, say, in space, underwater or on water. One cool instance of floating prefab is a skate ramp on Lake Tahoe.

This 7,000 lb was built in four days to promote Visit California’s Dream365 campaign. Over 300 man hours were needed to get the ramp on water. After finishing the project, the ramp was first tested by pro skateboarder Bob Burnquist.

A 7,300 lb (3,311 kg) floating skateboard ramp was installed on Lake Tahoe as part of Visi...

The floating structure consists of an 8 ft (2.4 m) tall wooden bank ramp and a smaller 5 ft (1.5 m) secondary ramp. Both wooden ramps rest on top of a 36 ft (11 m) long floating platform, with the ramps stained with different colors for a creative effect and polished to optimize skating speed.

The ramp took four days and 300 man hours to complete before it was lowered into Lake Taho...

Floating skate ramps have also been built elsewhere. For example Finnish snowboarders Eero Aattala and Roope Tonteri realised the idea by installing a skate ramp on a lake in Finland. The ramp was also used for swimming and enjoying the Finnish Mid-Summer Festival.

Midsummer after-sauna bonfire

Skateboarding and prefabricated construction seem to be a good match. This is also shown by a nonprofit company Skateistan that installed prefabricated shipping container skate parks in Afghanistan to enhance local physical education. You can read more about it from here.

Burnquist finished off the shoot with a massive air jump over the ramp and into the lake

We in Shanghai Metal Corporation have a wide experience in executing high-quality prefabricated building projects. If you are designing your own, please ask for our consultation by sending an inquiry. Please look at our website too see our former projects. Also follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

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Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

Pictures and original articles: Visit California, Jerry Blohm, Bob Burnquist, Gizmodo, Red Bull

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Floating Containers – Assistants for Navy SEALs

As shipping containers are getting more and more applications from skate parks to swimming pools, it is  becoming very obvious that we haven’t seen everything that these steel crates can do. Now they developing a different kind of shipping container system for military and maritime industry.

temp, tactically expandable maritime platform, darpa, upenn, modular, shipping container, diaster relief, military

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing a solution that helps organizations providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief support over broad coastal areas.  DARPA’s idea is to use standardized ISO shipping containers that form a platform for emergency helicopters to land. The floating shipping container system also offers accommodation facilities for its crew.

The solution will be designed to offer assistance to navy forces by freeing military ships to carry out other military missions. Tactically Expandable Maritime Platform (TEMP) consists of core-support modules that offer all the life support needed by the crew and delivery vehicles. The delivery vehicles, Captive Air Amphibious Transporters (CAAT), utilize air-filled pontoons that make the containers float. The crew will receive its supplies via unmanned air-delivery system.

The system has been simulated at the GRASP Lab of the university of Pennsylvania where scientists have demonstrated how the containers utilize GPS to easily assemble a floating platform. It would be interesting to know if the system could be controlled by artificial intelligence distributed with every container. Such system could be implemented with flocking algorithms that makes the  containers organize independently just like a flock of birds. Bringing this technology into play could be the next innovational step towards rescuing human lives.

20ft GP Container.JPG

As already mentioned, this ambitious project uses ordinary standardized shipping containers. We in Shanghai Metal Corporation provide those containers worldwide. Please visit our website for more information or send us an inquiry. Remember to check our social media sites Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

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Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

Pictures and original articles: Inhabitat, Makezine, DARPA, Wikipedia on Flocking, Flocking Algorithms on Jouni Smed’s lecture slides, Navy Live