USA - Los Alamos NM- Ski Lodge From Our Oversized Panels

The Los Alamos Ski Club gave us a chance to try out a simple 3 story steel structure of our design and completely enclosed, roof and wall, with panels injected in our large presses. This plant of ours in Los Alamos innovate in several areas of machinery, methods and product. In the commercial construction field, steel shells are very suitable and popular. This building is still used very effectively 20 years later and its cost was an amazing $17 per ft2

Remarquably, this structure does not need any heating after 9AM in ski season. The body heat of skiers and cooking kitchen with the sun showing up through the large plate glass is more than enough to keep the shell toasty inside till late in the afternoon. R36 wall and roof panels along with supertight joint guarantee that result, along with properly oriented windows.

None of this is really surprising if one studies this text concerning steel clad urethane panels used since the late 40's. Their longevity and sustainability is simply amazing.

The New Mexico Technical Developments

The Los Alamos factory was built to develop three new technologies relating to foam injected paneling systems and other aspect of the Archimede construction techniques. All achieved complete proof of our starting hypothesis:

• Extra-large panels from a new 'crossover platen press' ,
• Built-in metal cladding system with concealed edges and hidden connectors,
• Passive solar for commercial structures
• Steel structural frames requiring little or no post-finishing.

One of the original partner in these ventures is Eric Treisman, a Santa Fe attorney still very active with the Institute. His long-standing involvement with North American native tribes and with Tibet has been a source of enlightment for all of us.

1985-1995

In 1985, Poirier sold the Canadian Patent to his partner and immigrated to the US where he set up plants, first in New Mexico, then in Florida and Louisiana . He pushed research in several directions, adpating to desertic, then tropical and then cyclonic environments.
Soon it became know by developers of resorts that the Archimede houses could take it on the chin, having successfully gone through several big one unscathed. In 1995, Poirier was himself in one ot these condos when Luis hit the island of Sint Maarten with unusual ferocity. Again no damage to the 40 condos in Guana Bay Beach where winds were clocked at 285 mph (+400 km/he). In his own words, Poirier got 'a postgraduate degree in hurricane resistance' just by spending the next two weeks scouting the island to analyse breakage of materials in a force 5 hurricane. This one had sat on the island for 12 hours, destroying to an amazing degree. After 15 days, planes could land and our director went into a more conventional architectural practice and to the University of Montreal as an invited teacher of architecture and part-time researcher. But the 'manufacturing bug' bit again in 1997!