Round-about rooms
By Matt Cooney,
Dunedin design students sell their creations alongside some design superstars
Plasterboard doesn’t bend easily. The magic recipe, says Walter Hensch, is “water and skill”. Hensch spent three years perfecting his technique for bending the boards, but now he has his own patent and is finding a ready market among architects and developers looking for something a bit different.
Hensch markets his curved plasterboard under the ‘Roundy’ brand. It has many advantages—it’s less prone to damage than board with corners so it last longer, it’s well-suited to high-traffic areas, it saves space and it looks great. Hensch and wife Margaret are aiming particularly at the 2012 Olympics in Sydney.
Roundy plasterboard can be delivered in a range of sizes, including S-bend shapes and custom curves. Hensch, a builder, “practised and practised” before mastering the technique, but now he’s a dab hand. Even if someone tried to copy his patent, it would be very hard to pick up the skill, he says. “You’ve got to have a good feel for the board. We crack very few these days.”
But the patent allows Hensch to license Roundy overseas and that’s the step after the Olympics. “We’ve got a huge market in front of us.”
What cows are made from
Mapping the human genome took the work of nations, US$3 billion and 20 years. A Kiwi consortium including AgResearch, Dairy InSight and Agritech have landed a bargain, then, with their US$1 million contribution towards an international effort to map the bovine genome.
Mostly complete—and with the data in the public domain—the US$53 million project is a hugely valuable resource for New Zealand’s agricultural industries. AgResearch beef researcher Dr Theresa Wilson says the bovine genome sequence contains all the heritable information passed from parent to offspring. The huge amount of information now held can be applied to all facets of DNA-based testing, such as the enhancement of parentage and identity testing and the identification of genes controlling important traits. “It’s just the most amazing tool for making inroads into complex traits,” says Wilson. “Whereas five years ago it might have taken two years to get 100 good markers together, now it only takes a week.” Extensions to deer parentage and breed testing methods are now being planned by the Animal Genomics team at AgResearch.
Next up? An international collaboration to map the sheep genome.
‘Epoc’ wooden magazine rack
Hard sell
Design students in the deep south will find out very quickly how well their work stacks up. The Port Chalmers Design Store, which opened in October, stocks the work of young local students alongside the creations of New Zealand design superstars like David Trubridge. The store’s directors, Sarah Wood and Rebecca Wilson, challenged second-year design students at Otago Polytechnic to come up with new products—“high quality, not kitsch, New Zealand-designed products for under $100”. In November the first two student-designed products went on sale: the ‘Flux’ trivet with a pohutukawa silhouette, and the ‘Epoc’ wooden magazine rack (left).
Comments
Mathew Patterson
The plasterboard product looks fantastic, but I don't like their chances of selling much at the Sydney Olympics in 2012….much better to aim for London!
Matt Cooney
Strewth! Walter and Margaret are, of course, aiming for London. Thanks for the correction (social proofreading … like it …)
Anonymous comments on this post are disabled. Please sign up to post a new comment.