Ondo, the next wave.

Challenging yourself. Everyone knows it helps build confidence, increase resilience and even make your life more purposeful. Yet entrepreneuring engineers are often too busy keeping their business afloat, to realize that taking time away from their desks leads to greater things.

The challenge

Baudouin Hubert, one of the co-founders of Konligo, has been challenging Konligo’s team more often than not. In doing market research he met with Arnaud Istas, Head of Business Development at EasyFairs. They wanted to create an inspiration space to be used during the wide range of fairs they organize.  The technical requirements were:

• The size did matter. It had to be both big and tall so people could enter the domes and feel inspired;
• We had to avoid rectangular frames; 
• It had to be modular and reusable;
• The structure needed to be installed by untrained staff.

Baudouin convinced our potential customer that we could provide him with a dome that would make a lasting impression on the visitors of the fair EasyFairs was organizing. He then rushed back to the office and challenged Lara (Alegria Mira, another one of the founding members of Konligo) into thinking about how to implement our patented scissor technology in the development of new Konligo domes for EasyFairs. She joined hands with Prof. dr. ir. arch. Niels De Temmerman and from this creative endeavor emerged three different scissor structures: a tree, a more organic form and a shape they randomly baptized ‘The Wave’. 

Armed with basic 3D sketches, Baudouin and Lara headed to Ghent to pitch all three ideas. Pretty soon it turned out that the EasyFairs crew wanted ‘The Wave’, since the theme of the upcoming MoOD+Indigo fair that they were organizing in Brussels, was ‘The Next Wave in Textile Trends’. 

The clock incessantly continued ticking the time away: only two months and a half were left until the deadline.

Esperanto

It wouldn’t be a Konligo dome if its name wasn’t translated to Esperanto. 

You might know by now that the name ‘Konligo’ is in itself derived from the Esperanto word for ‘Connection’: kunligo. Since this word reminded us too much of a French word meaning something completely different, we decided to name it ‘Konligo’. Long story short: ‘The Wave’ became ‘Ondo’. The first tailor-made Konligo dome would soon become a fact!

Every challenge has its sub-challenges

Now came the real work: finding a way to assemble the Ondo dome without using too many different components. With a little help from Niels, Lara reduced the amount of unique components from twenty to five. 

Without overthinking it, the team built the Ondo according to Lara’s detailed plans. Building it was one thing, but how would we manage to set it up? Together with Haytam Abdelaoui, an intern doing a master’s thesis on the conceptual validation of a barrel vault scissor structure at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), we tried to pull it open from the top using a crane and a ladder to support the crane. Result: a bent ladder. 

In came Deus Ex Machina. The tech savvy Baudouin Hubert came up with a tool which would enable us to open the dome from the inside: a front lifter. 

Like with all Konligo domes, the Ondo was manually opened to its first opened phase. In came the lifting device which was carefully placed under Ondo’s highest peak. Aushim and Haytam turned the front lifters’ handles with great precaution. The suspense was tangible. The Ondo was now completely opened. It was time to retract the front lifter and see if the dome would stay in place. Aushim left Haytam in charge of retracting the lifting device. And behold, a star was born: Ondo didn’t budge. It worked. Lara, who was filming the whole thing, was overjoyed.

Agreed, with its surface of 100m2 and its 6 meters height, the Ondo dome is more massive than the Fastival or the Arko collection and less easy to set up, but it stands out thanks to its unique design.

Next time you think about a specifically shaped dome for your brand activation campaign for instance, don’t think it’s impossible. Just remind yourself that at Konligo, we’re always up for your challenge!