DIRTT
office systems production efficiencies technology sustainability
working environments | manufacturing by stephen riether
doing it right, this time
On a jobsite five or six years ago I noticed some unusual aesthetics and Ikea-like modularity in the wall system being installed during an office renovation. The system was by a new company called DIRTT Environmental Solutions, created by Mogens Smed who had left the office wall systems industry after the original SMED company was sold. The interesting name and its mantra: doing it right this time, suggested that there was something that Mogens Smed wanted to improve upon from his previous venture. Most offices still seem to prefer drywall fixed walls. Often I show up to verify measurements, and am greeted by a war zone of smashed walls being broken down into pieces small enough to fit into garbage bins and then shipped one elevator ride at a time to a large dumpster, then driven to the landfill. Soon after a brand new drywall office system, very much like the previous floorplan layout, is installed. This is the status quo of corporate move-ins — erase everything and create a new identity with all the costs associated with that process, both financial and environmental. These are the acceptable overhead costs of doing business. I asked what it is that sets DIRTT apart from other wall systems players and how does one ‘do it right’. I’d heard that DIRTT’s research and development department was attempting to sequester CO 2 in the very materials that they used, a bit of eco-alchemy, if you will. Mogens Smed said that it had proved undoable; a valiant and innovative goal but laws of entropy and science may be against such a concept. DIRTT’s focus instead should be sustainability and a general consciousness-raising of environmental stewardship.
Mogens Smed, Barrie Loberg (technology) and Geoff Gosling (product design and engineering) have created, in DIRTT, a company that changes the conventional way the office wall systems business is done through a combination of green environmental awareness with cutting edge technology to create a new kind of business model. DIRTT’s copyrighted software base, ICE, allows a designer to simultaneously draw walls, see a three-dimensional image of the finished product and a cost estimate. Production-ready, the file goes directly to the manufacturing process; soon after the product is ready for delivery. It is a design process that minimises both paper consumption and waste. ICE also manages the manufacturing process to minimise the waste of raw materials as well – the MDF, extruded aluminum and glass components. Human error is eliminated further reducing costly mistakes. Two large extraction machines on the exterior of the manufacturing plant eliminate dust and debris in the shop, promoting a healthy workplace. Paint coatings are water-based, reducing VOCs and eliminating off-gassing commonly associated with new offices. The conventional ‘new office smell’, much like the ‘new car smell’, is very unhealthy and is almost non-existent in DIRTT wall systems. The wall system consists of small panels that make up a whole, interchangeable and reusable, much like LEGO, using similar combinations of permutations and adaptations that give DIRTT wall systems considerable versatility. So far, several DIRTT clients have relocated offices and taken their walls with them.They dismantle the original configuration, redesign using the previous components with addition of some new and reassemble their offices in a new location with no messy or dirty demolition or bulk burdens for the landfills.
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