Ikaliak
The Inuit Experience
A great experience made for the graduation project of Industrial Design Bachelor's Degree. Going through lots of research, morphology exploration, hard work to and finally building a complete 1:1 Kayak Prototype.
A close understanding of Inuits culture's most precious object, which turns to be more than something sterile to be a full body extension.
Inuit Culture
Settled down on the surrounding territories close to the North Pole. The traditional lifestyle of the Inuit is adapted to extreme climatic conditions, with essential skills for hunting, fishing and trapping. As every day it's a surviving challenge.
A 5000 year old recollecting and hunting culture was able to develop the firsts kayaks, for example the only way to get one was at a certain age by a ritual act of the tribe. This shows the importance of connection in between man and body extensions, tools or as we simply know them today "objects".
Niche
Mar del Plata is a coastal city in the south east of Buenos Aires province. With many ocean activities, the Kayak culture grew in a significant way during the last decade giving the chance to local companies to develop their own products and build factories to supply the big demand.
The main Kayak activity is related to fishing in the near coast and lagoons along the coast and surroundings.
Brand development
Ikaliak comes from Inuit language. The brand image is based on the ancestors culture, taking the essential traits and applying them into the visual content and brand story.
Ideation
The kayak is a body extension for sailing, as a result for that, the ergonomics are playing one of the main roles in the product development.
The main objective is to provide a better fishing & sailing experience for the user.
Modeling
The 3D modeling of the product is essential for proportions and for solving existing problems that could not be seen with drawings.
At the same time 1:10 models had been made for extra support and a complete shape comprehension.
Some of the parts were printed in a 3D printer for the final prototype.
Craft Prototyping
As the Inuits build their own Kayaks, I decided to construct one by myself in order to understand the kind of feeling they had and why this object was so meaningful for them.
From a Polyurethane block, with techniques such as subtraction and addition of material, with different tools, to a 1:1 scale prototype.
