StartupRealities

Startup No 176 - StartupRealities 2020 series HighestPlatform installs raised observation decks and platforms at the top of houses and buildings or at the highest place in gardens where legally possible. This allows the building owners to climb up the stairs to the platform to look at the sky or film the sunset. CEO QUOTE "Most people dream of being up high - unless you have vertigo, of course. We make this happen: we install platforms on rooftops; we build a balcony above the balcony; we put up platforms in the canopy of trees. And it is an amazing experience to be standing at the top of the world, your world, looking at the sky. We can even lend you a temporary mobile platform, just to try for yourself the feeling of being up there. It is a real treat!" - said HighestPlatform founder and CEO Higgins Platt. Mobile platform (image source: Wikipedia )

Startup No 171 - StartupRealities 2020 series BarnPartitions  is a construction company that converts rural barns into residential homes by lining the walls with insulation and installing a movable suspended ceiling for heat insulation in the winter. The suspended ceiling is inspired by the retractable lining on heated swimming pools, which conserves the heat of the water during the night. CEO QUOTE " Barns are great places to live in during the summer: spacious and cool. It is the winter that makes living in them a bit of an ordeal. This is where our insulation technology makes the big difference. In the summer you can enjoy the spacious interior of a tall barn, all the way up to the roof. In the winter this space becomes a liability when you have to heat it up, so we install retractable suspended ceilings that keep your heating bill to a minimum. " - said BarnPartitions founder and CEO Barney Pebble . Barn in New England (image source: Wikipedia ) Barn interior...

StartupRealities No 164 CeilArt is an interior design company which has developed specialist equipment and frames that allow attaching paintings to the ceiling of a house. This makes it possible for home owners to utilise the empty space that a ceiling typically offers, while also creating art appreciation opportunities, especially for paintings displayed above the bed in a bedroom. TECHNOLOGY The company installs two perspex (transparent acrylic sheets) on the front and the back of every paining, irrespective of the strength of the frame and the canvas. The back perspex sheet helps attach the painting to the ceiling and also provides protection against damage from leaking water pipes from the floor above. The front sheet helps reduce the weight of the canvas and the pull force it produces on the frame, and protects from falling pieces in case the canvas gets torn. CEO QUOTE " We have had painted ceilings and frescoes in churches and palaces for centuries but ironically th...

StartupRealities No 148 TilesOut is an architecture design and construction company which has developed and patented new house roofing technology based on thick layers of alternating plastic cling film and bubble wrap. The roofing material is continuously applied on a roof beam structure by a robotic arm resembling the flying shuttle of a textile loom, suspended from a cherry picker . The thickness of the roofing sheets reaches up to 50 layers of alternating clingfilm and wrap, with minimal weight. ADVANTAGES The new roofing material has several advantages over traditional ceramic or bitumen tiles: 1) light weight; 2) translucent to sunlight (without being fully transparent); 3) providing perfect heat insulation in winter; 4) flexible and pliable (unlike corrugated PVC roofing sheets, which are brittle); 5) continuously applied on site, so no preliminary calculations and delivery specifications are needed; 6) easily repairable by applying more layers of sheeting. CEO QUOTE...

StartupRealities No 104 PrefabDomes  is a building design company which has developed and patented a half-elliptic pre-fabricated domed roof of glass tiles and metal frames that is custom made for individual houses and can be installed in a day. The domed shape of the roof creates a fully-functional additional floor at the top of the building, so house owners will no longer need an attic conversion in the future. The dome is custom-produced at specialist manufacturing facilities off-site and is delivered in large segments that are assembled on-site. Windows and chimneys can be integrated into the design of the dome at the manufacturing stage. CEO QUOTE "PrefabDomes draws inspiration from the domes of mosques in Central Asian. We create so much additional space in a house and the fact that the rooms under the dome are fully functional spaces makes them the most expensive part of the house. If all houses installed a prefab dome, this would increase house-specific residential sp...

StartupRealities No 87 EmbraceSpace is an interior design company that creates more space in the house by creatively installing shelving and cupboards. The company's speciality is lining with cupboards and shelves the upper end of the walls inside the room, so that the space at all ceiling corners that are not windows is utilised. CEO QUOTE "We all dump things on the floor, on chairs and tables at home. This habit creates clutter. EmbraceSpace helps you declutter your house by creating storage space high up on the walls. Think about a library: how many books can you store on shelves on the walls as opposed to in piles on the floor? The only thing that you sacrifice with EmbraceSpace is the Plaster-of-Paris decorations lining your ceiling...but these are out of fashion anyway," said company founder and CEO Emma Spaziani. Living room (image source: Wikipedia )