img(height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=2939831959404383&ev=PageView&noscript=1")

Flooring specifieds – that give products a context

Words:
Jan-Carlos Kucharek

Flooring products imagined in use, from the extreme to the everyday

Flotex Planks flocked tiles

Forbo

Naturally, sea otter was our first choice! You can’t argue with a million hairs per square inch, now can you? But apparently there’s some kind of problem with moth infestations? And then of course Compliance was worried that vegans would come abseiling through the glass roof or something.

So we went for Forbo’s 70 million fibres per m² Flotex flocked Planks tiles. They’re far more durable and easy to clean, and we feel that our sea otters are far more useful to the organisation in their existing Services roles. Fish pie Fridays, folks!

forbo-flooring.co.uk/

Entryway Inertia modular carpet 

Amtico

‘Here at Sexdonkey Brand Mavens, we briefed our interiors people to pick the pattern from Amtico’s new Entryway collection that best reflects the essential vibration of our 21st century IDENTITY™ operation. The impervious, fade-resistant Type 6,6 nylon fibres, we felt, perfectly represented our values. “Force” or “Charge” would certainly have energised the foyer, but their choice of “Inertia”, we feel, rightly emphasises the likelihood of SDBM staying at this location long enough for suppliers’ invoices to at least reach us. Names, people! The power of names!’

amtico.com

Heritage range of LVTs
Karndean

‘Hello? The Dowager Lady Grantham here. Yes, dear, your own beloved Granny! The very same! I’m so glad you remember.

‘The flat? You mean the bijou attic apartment-ette you’ve so kindly fitted out for me? Well, that’s precisely why I’m calling! These encaustic tiles on the kitchen floor…

‘…well, I dropped one of those eighteenth-century Meissen plates you admire so, and the stupid thing bounced!

‘…They’re vinyl? This is terrible! I have three dozen of those dreadful plates – how do I get rid of them now?’

karndean.com

Flowshield LXP poured resin

Flowcrete

Something of an Olympic historian, I have followed Leszek Blanik’s new Gdansk gymnasium project with interest. His signature ‘handspring double front vault in piked position’ was as much a marvel as this, his thoroughly 21st century facility. The hygienic, flexible, abrasion-resistant Flowshield LXP seamless polyurethane floor ensures that no matter how gruesome the carnage, the main gym hall will swab down nicely for years to come. But where are the cold baths? The traditional oily mud wrestling pit? And WHY OH WHY is everyone wearing clothes?

flowcrete.co.uk

Fusion carpet and LVT flooring

Tarkett

Tired of the monotony of office life? Looking for a career change? Don’t be daft! No-one’s going to give you a chance at your age. You’re done for, mate.

On the bright side, though, Upstairs have just signed the contract for Tarkett’s Fusion mixed modular flooring to be laid in the open-plan cubicle hell that is your gaol.

With just one gentle kick, your operator’s chair will soon be gliding from DESSO carpet tile to smooth Inspiration LVT in an instant. 

And back again, sadly. 

fusiondessotarkett.com/nl/

French sustainable oak parquet

Chene de l’Est

The highly-trained truffling hogs of the Périgord have been thrown into crisis by the discovery that the English commonly mistranslate ‘Chene’ as ‘Chien’; as a result, second-homers have been spotted in Chene de l’Est’s sustainable oak forests with their waggy-tailed companions making use of the facilities as only Les Rosbifs Idiotiques might permit. ‘Mon dieu,’ said Monsieur Porky-Porker of Périgueux, yesterday. Possiblement c’est bon pour le parquet mais mal pour nos truffles! Et quoi? Je serais jambon, c’est quoi!’

chenedelest.eu

Creation 55 luxury vinyl tile

Gerflor Group

Home, where busy until 7 at night when DIY SOS comes on. And there do I sit with my wife and Deb, the each remarking ‘Ooh, that Nick Knowles’ and the other ‘Ooh, but Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen though’, and I nonplussed at their talk until the big reveal when I too exclaim ‘Ooh, tasty!’, and consulting my accounts find that I am effectually 5,000l, the greatest sum I ever was, and so do I send for the exact same flooring displayed to good advantage in said episode. And so to bed.

gerflor.co.uk/

Natural Genius Slide wooden tiles
Listone Giordano

1990s World Tetris Champion Will Shoehorn has enjoyed a legendary career installing Listone Giordano’s parquet floors. So it sent ripples through the global tessellation community when 16-year old installation prodigy Isla Shovit demonstrated a dazzling mastery of its new ‘Slide’ tile set. With the three rectangular trapezoids giving the new rising stars infinite opportunities for interlocking innovation, Shoehorn has decided to put down the sustainably-forested premium hardwood lozenges for good and open a scree-organising consultancy in Snowdonia.

listonegiordano.com

Latest

A love of libraries and a mission for mass timber helped Madrid’s SUMA win the EUmies Award for Emerging Architecture for its Gabriel García Márquez Library in Barcelona

Interview with the Spanish architect of Gabriel García Márquez Library

Built-in cement plants and mycelium-inspired towers? SOM and Illinois Institute of Technology unite to produce Masters in tall buildings considering future cities in the context of density and climate change

Built-in cement plants and mycelium-inspired towers

Berlin architects Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke see their project for the Technical University at Braunschweig take the prize for viable, sustainable and cultural design

Sustainable project for the Technical University at Braunschweig takes coveted prize

The outward-facing, sustainable, timber Gabriel García Márquez Library in Barcelona gives Madrid-based SUMA Arquitectura the prize with its transformative community impact

Gabriel García Márquez Library rethinks the typology

Learn more about nurturing practice-client relationships and turning the short-term into the long-term

Learn more about nurturing practice-client relationships and turning the short-term into the long-term