Svelte was created to address a clear challenge in the building and construction industry – ensuring and scaling the simple, steady and sustainable sourcing of surfaces for complex, resource-sustainable building façades designs using double-curved panels as building envelopes.
Finding a cost-efficient solution to create fluid, double-curved shapes has been the Holy Grail of architecture and engineering worldwide. The challenge is to bridge the gap between the advances in 3D CAD software in architecture and materializing these concepts is in practice in an affordable manner. The most commonly used procedures today are ineffective subtractive processes, by producing computer numeric controlled (CNC) milled moulds to cast the panels in it. On average, the cost of a complex shape panel is 6 - 10 times higher than that of a flat panel.
The Svelte solution – the fully automated production for unique curved panels, is something that was not feasible before. Svelte uses a proprietary, unique, innovative machine system to generate all types of curved moulds, in one straightforward operation, at a fraction of the cost and time of current methods.
Svelte is a game-changer for utilizing resources in the building industry, while offering structural resistance and elasticity, controlled thickness, weight savings and improved appearance of the façade and can be used directly on the walls as thermal insulator, rain-screen or sound absorber.
Svelte disrupts the CNC milled moulds process similarly to how 3D printers impacted the prototyping industry, radically reducing labour efforts, production times and costs while pushing the boundaries of what is possible today to change architecture as we know it.
The feasibility study as part of the Phase 1 project helped validate the viability of Svelte’s technology, the market acceptance and future market potential of our solution. Phase 2 promises a rapid commercialization and market reliability capacity of the Svelte solution in our target markets.