ARCHIMEDE INSTITUTE


THE PERFECT DEMOLITION SYSTEM

When a hurricane passes over a house, the first part of the transit has winds coming from a fixed direction, swirling in gusts and dragging a vibrating tail behind the house, especially if it is one with square corners. Think of the swirls behind a large semi on the highway. Materials and connectors are quickly loosened but might still hold together.
Then comes the restful eye with no winds at all, after a maximum velocity was attained near the eye. Think of 185 mph as was topped on our Sint Maarten condos!
Then comes the wall of pain: from the opposite direction new winds hit suddenly with a punch equal to those just before the eye. What was loosened is now detached or broken off, flying away to destroy other houses. Those winds are also a lot wetter, in most cases.
Think of you one bends things in either directions to break them. That's what a decent hurricane does. In some cases, the hurricane will travel very slowly, compounding the damages. Luis in Sint Maarten had the bad idea to shake and vibrate it's way through the island in 12 hours, enough to disable the island for tourism for almost three years!
And we had no damage to speak of, in spite of the fact that concrete block houses all around had to be demolished and rebuilt.
Satisfaction for us, as those years of design and wind-tunnel testing had finally paid off in a conclusive way. The weaker hurricanes like David and Frederick and even Hugo did not provide the proof we needed. We needed a monster and we got  it on the 5th of September 1995. I was there. Thanks Luis!
Jacques

VARIETY AND ADAPTABILITY WITH 'ABREFS'

Spontaneous groupings adapting to both in-place sociology and ground conditions are the main feature of our 'ABREFS' -Economy of land use results and, when the users have a hand in putting these together,  pride of ownership, albeit temporarily, an attractive bonus.

HIGHER DENSITY GROUPINGS

The Domus system can me maximized for higher densities quite easily. It's remarquable soundproofing allows for such economy of land and resources.

FLOATING HOUSES

Archimede was seriously considered by developers to form floating recreational housing. Both mobile and anchored, these sturdy shells are ideal for large lake sites tourism.

TYPICAL CONSTRUCTION STEPS FOR STILT HOUSING

ECONOMICAL

As most of you have noted by now, the secret of our economical shelters resides in the repeatability provided to us by the geometries we use. In the RD's (rhombic dodecahedrons), all panels are parallelograms of the same size ( actually we use 2 sizes in our 'squashed' RD, one size for the walls and one size for both the roof and the underside panels). This allows for simple assembly jigs, a uniform press to inject all of these with urethane foam, uniform carrying carts, simplified loading of containers etc....
Moreover, since parallellograms can be made from rectangular building materials with no waste ( see this blog ), there is an added economy not present from regular construction where upwards of 20% of materials can end up in municipal dumps.
The other economies also derive from economy of scale. When hundreds of shelters are built using only a few identical parts, much less time is wasted in certification, inspection, training etc...Anf of course purchasing power is augmented to a great degree.

LIVING HIGH...SAFE AND DRY

This is the original sketch by Poirier of the elevated Archimede concept. Almost one thousand such houses were built worldwide. They were assembled in a few days and finished in a few weeks at the most. In several cases, the utilities were built concurrently with the shell erection, an advantage with stilt construction. Made up of 30 to 60 panels, any local crew could be hired to set them up with a small crane or by hand. It is ironic that in our ignorance of worldwide construction problems, we did not at that time see how well suited they were to resist tsunamis and earthquake. But we had done a wind-tunnel testing session at the University of Laval in Quebec City. We were aiming our market at the Arctic where fierce winds were clocked and where the need to build above ground was well established. In our first brochures we were already touting these as 'hurricane-proof' . It took several tropical hurricanes of Force 4 and 5 to establish these as the 'wonders of the Caribbean'.

FLOOD-PRONE AREA CONSTRUCTION SOLUTIONS

This house belongs to the Ferrari dealership owner in Montreal, a man who needed a secure garage under his house, one where he could wash off the road salts from under his prized set of wheels. In addition, the lot is setting next to the notorious Riviere-des-prairies, a picturesque and highly flood-prone area near Montreal. By building 'high and dry', this proud owner feels safe and snug during the occasional major flood when all his neighbors need to pile their belongings on top of their fridges and counters. But he does leave the Ferrari at the dealership when that happens. He also stores a motorized boat under the same house.
Archimede sold quite a few houses near rivers that flood occasionally. Several of them did weather severe floods and many townships now give building permits only to housing that have this capacity to resist the floods. Although Canada is not subject to hurricanes, it needs to be said that this same house needs very little else to be classified as hurricane proof: laminated glass and a stronger railing and stairs design.

PLACIDE POULIN, CO-FOUNDER OF ARCHIMEDE SYSTEMS

Placide was a fiberglass part supplier for the housing industry and the snowmobile manufacturers where Poirier was active in the early seventies. This is how they met and learned to trust each other. In 1980, they formed Archimede Systems to develop a patent that Poirier had concocted after a stint in the RV and modular housing industry. A brilliant strategist and marketer, Placide was responsible for the explosive growth of the Archimede sales. After five year and the need to develop the American market, Poirier and Poulin went their separate ways with the former creating the MAAX group of companies integrating Archimede with Acrylica and Modern Fiberglass and Metal, the original company that made bathtubs and snowmobile parts (These are the first three letters of the MAAX acronym) . He headed MAAX for fifteen years, growing it from a revenue of $10M to a $1B company recently sold at his retirement. Now a prosperous and solid golfer, Placide nevertheless sits on the board of directors of CAMADA, one of our corporate sponsors, a Venture Capital group company handled with flair by his eldest daughter Marie-France. The latter was also a very effective Archimede employee during her university holidays.

A DESERT JEWEL

Once an Eastern Airline captain from Sierra Vista AZ flew over the Guana Bay Beach resort in Sint Maarten. He was intrigued by the shape of the housing he saw (to see exactly what he saw, check out this aerial view of Guana Bay Archimede Village, Sint Maarten NA). When he took a taxi and visited the project, he knew at once that this was IT. He needed a house that could remain unattended for weeks during his long flying blocks yet remain stable and theft proof. What better way than to buy one for his site high enough so that a potential burglar would be seen carrying a 21 ft ladder from the highway to access his balconies( where he kept expensive furniture and from which they could crack open the patio doors. ) The lower entry had but one door protected with 1/4 inch steel and a loud alarm system. He was never robbed and the house did not even need AC. From his own lips: "This house is so highly insulated that all I have to do in the hottest summer spell is to keep windows closed till 2PM. At that time the breezes kick in and I can open them to change the air...still very cool inside because of our cool nights'. Smart airline captain. Which is more that could be said of our 'French only' erection crew from Canada: Looking for a flight to this remote south Arizona location, they peeked at a globe and chose the Montreal-Dallas-El Paso flight, one that had them travel 400 miles by car. They had never heard of Tucson but remembered the Marty Robbins hit tune from the sixties!

SOME OF THE ARCHIMEDE PIONNEERS

Shown in this 1985 Quebec sugarhouse party, are seen in the photo from left to right:
  • Eric Triesman, Stanford Graduate from Santa Fe NM, assisted in getting the US operations off the ground. Now a consultant member of the Institute.
  • Placide Poulin, original partner from Beauce, Québec, now the retired and very successful industrialist that headed of the MAAX group of companies. a member of the board of Camada Group.
  • Jacques Bernard Poirier, architect and founding president of Archimede Systems in 1981. Poirier is the actual director of the Institute.
  • Don Arrowsmith, of South Florida, is the ex-Navy pilot who built a marketing program for Archimede International. He is now retired and a member of our advisory board.

ELEVATED WITH A PURPOSE

Shown at trade shows where sometimes there is only one day to put it up, the basic Archimede houses attracted crowds of up to 75,000 people in one weekend thorughout the early 80's. No one appeared to be surprised when it was hailed as 'Tomorrow's House', even though the actual purposes of sitting it high were:
  • To profit from small lots by parking the auto below it
  • To better resist floods and earthquakes
  • to create a higher space that would leave cold air below, along with boots, skis and snow covered clothing.
  • for the added security from robbery where only one door needs to be protected
  • And basically to profit from the views and the breezes afforded by elevated living.
It needs to be said that the speed of assembly reflects the speed of fabrication. Uniform repeatable parts allowed Archimede houses to be fully made 'from scratch'; all windows where of the same design and sizes, all were fixed with an insulated panel below for ventilation. And of course all panels were of the same size as explained elsewhere in this site.