The purpose of this project is to design a roof box for Urban users living in modern houses. Usually, the compactness of these houses does not allow the luxury of owning traditional hard-shelled roof boxes. Taking inspiration from the inflatable technology used in stand-up paddleboards and kayaks, this project explores the possibility of implementing the drop-stitch material for fabricating an inflatable roof box.

The drop stitch fabric was first developed in the early 1950s by Goodyear for their inflatable aeroplanes. Although most of its early applications were classified by the military, the drop stitch material is presently being implemented in various products such as Kayak, AirTrack, Inflatable Cooler etc.

The scope of this thesis remains within concept design, which is an early phase of product development. Following the three stages, background research, concept generation, and concept evaluation, the project implements various conventional and intuitive research methods, such as literature review, brainstorming, prototyping, testing etc.

The project was a collaboration between Industrial Design and Product Development, which made it possible to view the project from different perspectives. It explores various design aspects, such as shape, form, curvatures, ergonomics etc. and engineering aspects, such as strength, stiffness and structural integrity.