Water test at BOOT & FUN Berlin · Photo by Jeffrey De Weerdt
10weeks at ONAK
9 kgfinished weight
±10 minassembly time
Berlinfinal presentation
The assignment
A kayak to paddle. And carry home.
The assignment during my ten-week internship at ONAK was to develop a new foldable kayak. Jeffrey De Weerdt and I worked towards a model that felt stable on water and stayed light and simple to assemble on land.
Development at the ONAK workshop · Photo by Jeffrey De WeerdtDevelopment processMake · test · refine
Working directly in ONAK's characteristic sheet material
01
Prototype
Full-scale models made the folding geometry testable.
02
Test
Assembly, stability and handling had to work on water.
03
Refine
Each test informed the construction and user experience.
Material logicFold · assemble · explain
Testing how the structural sheet takes shape
Making complexity understandable
A good fold should be easy to repeat.
The hull, seating and structure developed alongside an illustrated assembly manual. A foldable kayak only works if someone can confidently put it together for the first time.
Assembly manual developed alongside the product
The result
Compact on land. Confident on water.
The finished Kajak weighs 9 kg and takes around ten minutes to assemble. Standing it upright at the exhibition revealed how a flat sheet becomes a usable kayak.
Proof, not promise
Put it in the water.
The ONAK team at BOOT & FUN Berlin
From workshop to exhibition
From our workbench to Berlin.
I developed the Kajak with Jeffrey De Weerdt, in collaboration with Tim De Rydt, Frederik van Heereveld and the ONAK team.
