Soudeh is a principal of Alterativ Design Lab with her husband, Mehdi Einifar.
Alterativ Design Lab is a new company, started just before pandemic hit. It has been quite challenging though exciting nonetheless, getting up and running through such difficult times. Their philosophy – are committed to altering life through conscience design.
Alterativ’s work includes:
- Real estate developments in different scales
- Modern custom homes
- 3D printed architecture
- Mass timber structures
They partner with architects to see their designs come to life. This includes their first nations 3D printed housing using biomass project. The project partners for it is the government of BC.
Why 3D printing? There are a lot of benefits to 3D printing in the housing market:
- It uses locally sources biomass material, thus creating economic opportunities
- You can build more affordably, higher quality products without additional costs
- Robots are used as workers
- Builds a durable building system with less maintenance
- Resolves mold issues
- Fast results as you can 3D print day and night
They are trying to replace concrete with 80% biomass products. There are some examples of successful projects from around the globe with most high quality buildings in Europe. (See a couple of links below)
The vision statement for the first nations housing project is “Creating the future in connecting to the past.”
Alterativ did a fair bit of cultural background study before launching into design. They were inspired by the art and cultural symbols as well as the architecture of the past building structures and village communities.
Considering all of the factors they learned about – close and clustered homes with no overlap, no square corners but rather mostly rounded, designs started to emerge.
They are currently at the earliest stage of trial and error in the iterative design process. The buildings so far are all inspired by historic first nations buildings, the longhouse, wigwam, and pit house. They wanted to design options that can be mixed and matched based on needs and desires of the families involved.
The material they are looking at right now is 40% biomass, hoping to reach 80%. They are waiting for printer to arrive from Europe and intend to start with something very small, troubleshoot, and build from there. They need to be sure coding is approved by UL Canada. So far there isn’t any code approved for 3D home design in Canada yet.
Realistically it will be a few years before these designs will come to fruition. A very exciting and innovative prospect.
Contact Soudeh should you have any questions or want more information.
Links of interest:
Rabbi Dr. Duhan-Kaplan is active in the Vancouver community as a guest lecturer on spiritual, multifaith and Jewish topics; a synagogue musician and prayer leader; a retreat leader; and an organizer of community conferences and events, including VST’s annual Inter-Religious conference.
