Will Crawford and Peter Brewin, former classmates at the Royal College of Art, have come a long way from larking about with balloons and plaster of Paris.
Last week the pair, both 26, won a $100,000 international design award for their inflatable concrete structures - which were conceived after lining the inside of balloons with plaster of Paris - setting them on the way to making their invention a viable product.
They were awarded the Saatchi & Saatchi World Changing Ideas design gong for 2005 in New York. The judges, who included musician Lou Reed, composer Philip Glass and reknowned lateral thinker Edward de Bono, were asked to choose the idea that they believed had the greatest world changing potential - either in terms of the individual, society or the whole world.
Mr Crawford told Times Online that as well as helping to publicise their efforts to raise launch finance, the monetary award would go a long way to helping them make the full-sized prototypes needed for field testing.
"It's a huge help. The cash comes at a critical point where we need to start full-sized prototyping. It's going to be incredibly helpful."
Their company, Concrete Canvas, needs £200,000 to build and field-test prototypes. It has also applied for a government grant to make up the difference.
Half of the Saachi & Saachi prize is in cash, half is in services from the marketing giant.
Just add water
Their shelters start life as a sealed plastic sack that measures just over one metre squared. Inside is a cement-impregnated fabric attached to the outside of an inflatable plastic liner.
To inflate the shelter, the sack is filled with water, the fabric is unfolded and a chemical pack is activated, releasing gas into the plastic inner. Twelve hours later, the thin concrete fabric has set in the shape of the inflated liner, creating a rigid but lightweight domed dwelling.
No training is needed, Mr Crawford said, and the weight and size are comparable to those of tents used by relief organisations and the military.
Concrete Canvas aims to field test with an aid organisation such as Medecins sans Frontieres or Care, having talked to both. "If the testing goes well we believe we should be able to raise the next round of funding to get it off the ground," Mr Crawford said.
He and Mr Brewin were convinced of the need for the product when it won its first award from the BSI which allowed them go to Uganda to research the idea. "We went to the refugee camps and saw how people used structures. We spoke to dozens of NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and they enrouraged us to go forward."
High praise
In New York Concrete Canvas beat competitors including Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia to which any reader can contribute, and a plan to save the DNA of all endangered species.
Bob Isherwood, Saatchi & Saatchi's Worldwide Creative Director and the convenor of the award, said: "Concrete Canvas answers a need that has been thrown into particularly sharp focus this year with the impact of the tsunami and the Pakistan earthquake."
Nick Kingsbury, partner at technology-focused investment group 3i, said that the inflatable structure was a "brilliant piece of design" combining simple materials that would be usable in disaster situations.
"You've got something that is rigid and much more durable than a canvas tent. You can even coat the inside to make it sterile for medical procedures," he told Times Online. "It's not high tech, it's a fantastic innovation using canvas and concrete and pressurised gas. It's good because it's got to be simple."
Military applications
Mr Crawford said that the obvious appplication of the product was for relief organisations in disaster zones but added that the military, with ground forces' need to quickly erect semi-permanent camps, was also likely to be a major consumer of the structures.
He and Mr Brewin both had experience of the military world with Mr Crawford working at the MoD and Mr Brewin doing a stint in the Army. Both earned engineering degrees before studying industrial design at the RCA.
Both also had friends serving in the Army overseas and some were refusing to stay in tents as they provided no protection against bullets or mortars, he said.
The pair, who previously appeared on the television start-ups competition Dragon's Den, are currently in talks with private investors to raise the capital needed to get the product manufactured.
"The Dragon's Den investors were not right for us," Mr Crawfford said . "It's not the right environment to negotiate giving away a stake in your company. We are now in a situation where we can explain our proposition properly."
Mr Crawford has worked for a large engineering company, as well as the MoD, but said that he wanted the flexibility and independence of running his own company. The corporate world was not for him.
The pair want to see their product out there and working. "To run that as a successfull business as well would be brilliant," Mr Crawford said.
