Kinetic Flooring

My work at Pavegen caught the attention of BBC Persian Click, who came to the workshop in December 2024. I walked them through the Pavegen system and some of the new innovations I’d been working on, including the new substructure I’d developed and integrating solar power into the system, as well as talking to them about sustainability at Pavegen and in the industry.

Research

• Market research

• Technology research

Design

• Snap fits

• Design for Manufacture and Assembly

• Scalable design

• IP-ratings

• Integration with electrical components

The Brief

“Redesign the installation method of our flooring to reduce costs (material, delivery and assembly), reduce the environmental impact, and improve the finish of the product.”

the project

Pavegen’s existing flooring was installed in a very rigid way, with pretty much every component designed to fit precisely together. Whilst this “worked” for smaller flooring arrays, across larger arrays any imperfections in manufacture or assembly would stack together, making the flooring very difficult to fit together. Additionally, the flooring consisted of many confusing parts - including large and heavy GRP sheets and confusing folded steel frames, which was never clear how each part was intended to fit together.

I set out to design a new installation system - still using the same generators and tiles - that would be functionally identical for the end-user, but solve all of these problems and more behind the scenes. I set out to make the flooring more easily scaled, more intuitive to put together, and cheaper to manufacture and deliver and quicker and easier to install, all whilst reducing the environmental impact.

Existing System Analysis

The existing installation system consisted of the following layers, bottom to top:

1. Plastic pedestals, to keep the flooring level on an uneven surface (cheap and prone to breaking)

2. Aluminium joists to support the GRP sheets (needed to be precisely cut for alignment, with no tolerance accounted for or thermal expansion/contraction taken into account, extensive grid under whole array)

3. GRP sheets to locate the generators (waterjet cut, very expensive, very unintuitive which sheet goes where, large and heavy and imprecise, also no tolerance accounted for)

4. Steel frames (picture frame the array, poor finish aesthetically, unintuitive which frame goes where, imprecisely made)

New system Analysis

The assembly of the new system I designed went as follows:

1. Plastic pedestals keep the floor level as before, and now also directly support the generators, but a new supplier, with more durable pedestals and sound absorbing features

2. Custom extruded aluminium joist around the perimeter to keep the flooring together and with a snap feature for the perimeter stronger than the old joists, and only necessary around the perimeter

3. Custom extruded aluminium perimeter pieces, with a durable powder coated finish and fewer variations for easier installation, that snap fit into the joist and enable an LED strip to be integrated easily

Installation

The new installation structure was installed for the first time at Sports Boulevard in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Pavegen’s largest project ever. This was only possible due to the new design, which lowered shipping costs, reduced installation time, and allowed for scalability up to this size.

• 5 separate flooring arrays

• 51.3 m total length

• 71.8 sqm total area