XFrame has shored up customers such as ANZ Bank and is working with Lendlease and JLL for its innovative end of life wall systems.
Ged Finch was so alarmed by the amount of waste he’d seen while working on construction sites in Malaysia that when he returned to New Zealand for his architecture masters research project he decided to do something about it.
The result was XFrame, a circular building system specifically designed for end-of-life deconstruction, reconfiguration and reuse.
“The idea for the demountable braced wall frame came about halfway through the research where we were looking at some geometries that were self-stabilising – that held themselves together and were strong in their own right,” Finch said.
“And that’s what the diagrid structure leads to. It solves a whole lot of problems for deconstruction, because one of the challenges is that the parts never fit back together once you’ve taken them apart.”
XFrame eliminated that challenge. The system is a matrix of components that can be pulled apart and rearranged without creating any waste, supplemented by planning software.
“Circularity is the pillar of what we do. We’re trying to create something that is reusable and demountable and that lasts for a long time,” Finch said.
“The way current internal wall framing works is that it’s a timber or metal stud with plaster board, with gyprock glued and screwed to it. So we thought ‘How do we create a series of interchangeable layers that can all come apart?’ And we wanted to do that using material that was available locally, available quickly, renewable, and had a low carbon footprint.”
The answer was Pinus Radiata. XFrame uses the engineered version – plywood – because of its flexibility, the fact that they could leverage existing manufacturing set-ups, and the potential that they could find a supplier of plywood in each state using wood from that state.
30 per cent less material than a standard timber wall frame
While Finch acknowledges that engineered boards contain petrochemicals, he said that it’s currently the most sustainable option and looks forward to bio adhesives. He estimates a comparable steel wall would need to exist for 700 years before it was more sustainable than an XFrame wall. The system also uses 30% less material than a standard timber wall frame.
Addressing deconstruction waste
But where XFrame really comes into its own is the demolition.
“You can pull apart and reuse each and every element. We validated that. We’ve built spaces and pulled them apart, sent them to Melbourne, where we built them and pulled them down again and shipped them back to Adelaide and tested that whole process.”
The system uses reversible fixing methods – no nails or glue – and Finch said you can get into a wall in 10 to 15 seconds, as the lining is simply clipped on, and deconstruct a whole wall within five minutes. Every part will be reusable. You just pull the wall panel off, soyou can get to wiring for instance, and it can then be reattached via the clip system.
“The way it works is the system is made up of all these small, standard parts. So, say you went into an office and pulled a wall out that was 2.5 metres tall and you needed one that was 2.8 metres tall. What you could do is swap the top parts to make it taller. It’s reusable and flexible enough to make those changes.”
Finch said that as the system is entirely predictable in terms of how much wood is needed – the proprietary planning software includes an automated carbon accounting process.
“We can instantly tell the designer, when they give us the plan, how much carbon they’re going to sequester or emit based on what’s in the project. What’s nice about that is now we can help the architect carbon engineer better performance. They can send us two plans and we can tell them which one works better.”
XFrame is available for all elements of a build, however, Finch sees the most potential in internal partition walls in retail, offices and multi-rise residential. This is the origin of a lot of construction waste because they change so often.
“The product was originally designed for two storey residential timber frame buildings and while we very much know there is an application for residential, and we do build the occasional residential unit, the value proposition is much stronger in internal partitioning.
“Office spaces is where we’re really starting to see movement. One of the really bizarre things about the system is that it fits in a lift because you can compress it all down. So we can go into Level 20 of a building and do an entire fit out in a week. That’s pretty unheard of. We’re excited about that application.”
“I could never have done this in New Zealand”
Finch said Australia is a good market because of the privatised model of consenting and approving buildings, and the sustainability mandates that many Australian organisations are working towards. “New Zealand’s actually quite difficult because all the consenters are councils and they’re very risk adverse. So Australia makes a lot of sense to do a new product like this.
“We also have fantastic manufacturing capacity in Adelaide and our manufacturing partners are scaling up with us. We have a good relationship with ANZ Bank and have a pipeline of work there [through a contract with Lendlease and JLL], and our job now is to expand our customer base into other office and retail fit outs across Australia.
“We know there is strong interest in America and Europe regarding the use of these systems and retail fitouts and we are currently working through partners and customers in both of those regions. The story about this technology being from New Zealand and Australia is really well received.”
Finch said Europe already has a system wall sector, but the internal demountable petitions are usually made of steel – heavy and limited in application.
“So we’ve come at it saying let’s use a low cost existing carbon neutral material, and let’s make it really flexible. And that’s been really well received. We’ve also done this whole mounting system: all of the linings have a special clip and can come on and off really economically. And that’s another piece of IP that allows us to stand out in the market.”
However the XFrame story won’t stop there. Finch said the company was research-driven and continues to work to develop circular centric building technology and educate the sector on the importance of design and specification to achieve circular economy principles. It has produced a Circular Interior Design Guide, which is available to download free on its website.