Radisson Blu Aqua, Chicago

Tonight, Thursday September 27th, Graven Images’ Jim Hamilton will be doing a Billy Joel style live link-up on Skype to jointly host a tour of the interiors of the recently completed Radisson Blu Aqua in Chicago. The tour has been set up by the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

He’ll be broadcasting from his bed, in Glasgow Scotland, as the time difference means that it will be 11:45pm in Glasgow – and Jim will only just be back from the pub.

Appetite for Design event details

A New Life for Limestone

Specification involves decision making and in many ways a process of elimination, in the same way that you trawl the entire assemblage of high street stores with your partner seemingly in search of the holy grail, only to find yourself back at your first port of call purchasing their initial object of desire. (This purely from a male perspective, of course!) During the journey you will have hinted at, or at least leant towards, a particular choice of object in the hope of short cutting the elimination process.

As an interior design specifier you endure these journeys daily, swapping roles with your partner, your own role being taken on by a never ending stream of salespeople and glossy brochures. Relying on instinct, information, budget, and if you’re fortunate, previous experience of a particular product or material, you reach a decision. You could argue that by sticking to a tried and tested palette of materials you could expect to guarantee reliability, performance and ultimately the success of a proven formulae. But by the same token you might argue that familiarity can breed repetitiveness and in many instances you can ‘expect the expected’. My own feeling is that as an architect or designer, you have a duty based on your acquired knowledge and experience to push the boundaries and limitations within our respective fields, and to strive for interesting, intelligent, coherent and if possible unexpected solutions. To consistently do this, however, ultimately entails an element of risk, and it is at this stage that you place your trust in the hands of the suppliers, manufacturers and installers.

In recent times limestone has been a material whose performance in commercial use has suffered severely in terms of bad press. On occasion limestone falls into the category of ‘design from photography’, which occurs when designers, architects and other specifiers judge the suitability of certain materials partly on the basis of their inclusion within certain well published projects. It had been viewed wrongly as a cheap alternative to marble and dumped into the UK market on the back of projects such as the ‘Grand Louvre’ completed in 1993 by JM Pei. Some of the softer, cheaper Spanish, Portuguese and French stones were never intended to be used on floors but poor marketing and uniformed specifiers wrongly selected them, resulting in the aforementioned bad press to the extent that in some practices specification of limestone is banned. The most common failures in the faulty stones were discolouration, surface breakdown, pitting and inability to clean, and yet most stones were given test certificates.

Domus Tiles recently enlisted the help of eminent geologist Kip Jeffrey to evaluate the performance of an extensive range of limestone under stringent criteria to provide two ranges of high quality durable flooring tiles. Testing was carried out on over one hundred stones and to date only eleven have met the Domus criteria, (understandable when you consider that chalk is a form of limestone.) That isn’t to say that other suppliers don’t have suitable ranges of commercial limestone available, but my own experience of limestone has been limited to the Domus range which was specified recently in Tun Ton Restaurant in Glasgow by Graven Images, and to date has performed well. Domus have provided a fairly extensive brochure relating to this particular subject which explains in simple terms their own range, criteria and methods of testing limestone, while for the stone boffins out there the importance of microstructure, microposity and mineralogy are also discussed.

The great pyramids Cheops in Egypt has almost 2.5 million limestone blocks, some weighing up to 70 tonnes. The tolerance of these blocks—plus or minus 1mm—surpasses even modern day technology when you consider that a 300x300mm square limestone tile, machine manufactured today has a similar tolerance. The complexity and precision achieved in constructing this Egyptian colossus is further highlighted by the fact that a thin layer of hard limestone veneer was added on top of the softer core of limestone block, initially for greater durability but also for the reflective qualities of the harder stone which would have cast an enormous glow from the pyramids as the sun rose.

Rubber: Revolution or Evolution?

Rubber ducks, rubber rings, rubber dummies, hot water bottles, wellies and condoms. Whether we like to admit it or not, most of us, at some point in our lives, will have had a close personal relationship with some form of rubber object. This tactile raw material has a friendly, almost therapeutic quality to touch, perhaps explaining the widespread use of rubber in the design of toys.

As a designer you develop your own process of design and through experience learn that the spark of inspiration needed to fuel any idea can be triggered by an obscure source. A subliminal seed sewn in a happy childhood memory could be enough of a magnetic pull towards the choice of a particular colour or material (where a toy duck can be the catalyst for specifying a yellow rubber floor). My own experience of specification adds fuel to the argument that a client’s pre-conceived subliminal perceptions of certain materials or colours will often tip the scales in favour of their use in a project or their removal from it. I’ve known instances where clients where clients will happily propose deletion of important elements in a scheme as a cost saving exercise in order to save their ‘rubber wall’. They assume the role of the eco warrior and ego warrior rolled into one. If truth be told I’m sure most designers would hold their hand up, guilty of the same sin or avarice, in order to retain a precious element. In most instances both the designer and the client have their own personal hierarchy of design elements within a project. If on occasion they are in close proximity or in tandem with each other then often more dramatic results can be achieved as the ‘bigger picture’ and strong ideas are left intact. Rubber in this balance more often than not benefits from its own portrayal as a daring avant-garde pillar of contemporary design.

My evolution into adult rubberhood was sparked by the discovery of rubber giants ‘Dalsouple’ (at IDI in Earls Court, 1992) who by their own admission are “huge in rubber”. Since our first encounter, and Tim Gaukrogers subsequent gospel, I have spread their rubber over floors, walls, stairs and even ceilings to help advance their rubber revolution.

Dalsouple’s latest flooring product has been developed to expand the possibilities and options available to specifiers faced with the task of covering metal access floors. Most new buildings and major refurbishments, especially office buildings, use under floor cabling with metallic access floor tiles suspended on adjustable legs to allow easy access for modification and repair work. While convenient and cost effective this limits the choice of floorcovering to carpet and carpet tiles which can be laid without adhesive. Resilient floorcoverings (eg; vinyl, linoleum, rubber, laminates) that have to be fully bonded to the sub floor for dimentional stability cannot be used on metallic access floors.

Dalsouple have found a solution to increase the choice for specifiers. Their new rubber tile range is manufactured using a flexible underlay of composite magnetic material which has been specially re-inforced. They can then be loose laid on the metallic sub-floor, and the totally magnetic base holds the tiles securely in place. When access to the sub-floor is required, the magnetic tiles can be lifted and re-positioned time after time without any loss of performance.

Dalsouple’s new approach to access flooring not only provides a high level of performance but opens a Pandora’s Box of colour and texture for contemporary office design. The rubber is available in a huge range of colours, textures and finishes. Each of the thirty different relief patterns plus smooth surface tiles are available in 60 standard colours, with special colours matched at no additional cost. Marble and terrazzo finishes can be created in any colour combination to the client’s specification. Floors are hygienic, easy to clean, anti-slip and highly resistant to cigarette burns. Floors are also anti-static and therefore ideal for computer areas. The heaviest traffic environments don’t cause any problems while the tiles remain soft underfoot and noise absorbent. Aside though from its technical advances and practical attractions and purely from a designers point of view, it feels great and looks fantastic.

We specified Dalsouple’s new product in a recent Graven Images project to design the Glasgow offices for computer games company, Red Lemon. When I proposed the new Dalsouple magnetic floor to their Managing Director, Andy Campbell, the wry smile on his face re-affirmed my earlier suspicions concerning our client’s subliminal thoughts about sticky rubber.

The magnetic rubber used in their reception area is conductive with the clean contemporary aesthetic outlined in the client’s original brief.

The irony in Red Lemon’s rubber revolution is encapsulated in my aforementioned evolutionary theory where little boys with toys grow up into big boys with bigger toys! At Red Lemon they’ve swapped their rubber ducks for rubber joysticks!

Dalsouple have asked us to point out that they have a patent pending for this magnetic flooring product.