10 March 2008

Terrific terrazzo

Florida seems to be the land of the terrazzo floor. Or at least it used to be. I live in a part of Florida that was essentially built out by the mid-seventies, and the typical house in this part of the world is an 1800 square foot, cinder block ranch house. I remember being mortified by them when I first settled here but in time, the Florida rancher has grown on me. When the Florida ranch house was hitting its stride as a style, it marked the culmination of house building technology of the time.

Prior to the mid-'50s, houses built here were timber frame homes that sat on pylons about two feet off the ground. These frame homes had framed floors. For the most part; homes here don't have foundations. This is due to the proximity of the water table to the surface of the earth, and it's also due to the staggering volumes of rain water that fall during the rainy season. So without a foundation, traditional home builders here simply made sure that a home didn't sit on the ground. Around the middle of the last century though, somebody figured out how to pour a slab foundation from concrete and to build a home directly on that slab. Enter the Florida rancher.

Almost all of these sitting-on-a-slab ranch homes had terrazzo floors. Terrazzo is a flooring material that the Romans perfected and the terrazzo floors all over Florida are essentially the same thing the Romans used. A slurry of concrete and decorative stone aggregates is spread over a prepared surface and then the mixture is leveled. Once cured, the top layer of the concrete and aggregate mix is ground off; leaving a smooth, shiny floor with a distinctive pattern of random stone pieces in it. A typical, vintage terrazzo floor looks like the image to the left.

The native Floridians I know shudder at the thought of a Terrazzo floor. I think they're beautiful though. I suppose that people grow to resent what they grew up with and my native Floridian friends' bad reaction to Terrazzo is the same as my urge to vomit when I see hex signs or other Pennsylvania Dutch accouterments.

Traditional terrazzo is a labor-intensive and as building trade labor has become more valuable, the price of a new terrazzo floor became prohibitive and at some point in the mid-'70s, terrazzo was largely abandoned.

But terrazzo is making a comeback. It's starting to show up all over the place in public spaces and in private homes. The new terrazzo is a bit different than the vintage stuff and in a lot of ways it's a better deal. It's certainly less expensive. New terrazzo uses epoxy resins instead of concrete as a base. That's the first difference. In using an epoxy, the resulting floor is non-porous and highly stain resistant. Since the base material is manufactured and is essentially moldable plastic, it can be made in virtually any color. In a nod to the idea of sustainability, the aggregates used in the new stuff tend to be things like recycled glass and cast off stone from quarries. The new terrazzos have the same shiny stone feel of the old ones and they are virtually maintenance-free.

Since they are no longer being used as a cheap floor in mass-produced housing, the new terrazzos are as often as not designed and installed by true craftspeople and artists. Here are a few examples of this new terrazzo. In the hands of a competent professional, the sky's the limit. Or should that be the floor's the limit?

You can learn all about the new terrazzo floors and see some great examples of them in actual homes and businesses at the website of the National Terrazzo and Mosaic Association (www.ntma.com).

06 March 2008

Mein gott im himmel! That's a stone mosaic!

The image to the left is a mosaic made by a San Francisco company called Exact Mosaics (http://www.exactmosaics.com/). It is an uncut tile mosaic made from 5/8" squares of natural marble.

I have never seen anything like this and I'm pretty much struck dumb by it. Exact Mosaics uses a pattern-recognition software to interpret a scanned image. The software actually selects the placement of the differently toned squares of marble that make up the whole piece. I mentioned yesterday that achieving curved shapes was something that was possible only with cut tile. Well, these people have found a way to do it with uncut squares and in a natural material to boot. Unbelievable.

The second photo is a close-up of the top left corner of the image and you can see the individual squares. The Romans mastered the art of the mosaic and since then, people have been using pretty much the same techniques. True, the Romans didn't have glass tile the way we do now, but even most glass tile gets used the way the ancients used colored stone. These guys on the other hand, have created something entirely new. Got to their website and gawk.

04 March 2008

More more more mosaics mosaics mosaics

I had another big conversation with a client this afternoon about the wonderful, accessible world of glass tile mosaics. I am suggesting that this particular client forgo the usual accent wall in a great room and that she instead use a glass mosaic on that expansive wall. I cannot get enough of glass tile mosaics, and seeing them used on a huge scale is a thrill beyond compare. Please excuse my hyperbole.

There's a company in Oregon called Hakatai (http://www.hakatai.com/). Hakatai sells mosaic tile by the truckload, they sell to the public and will do custom work using fine-cut, cut and uncut glass tile.

Uncut glass tile mosaics use the same size square tile over their entire design. A lot of times, uncut mosaics stick to geometric patterns. However, by varying the colors of the individual tiles, a mosaicist can convey an alarming amount of detail and subtlety. Uncut mosaics are interesting because they only look right when viewed from a short distance.

Simple cut mosaics rely on the square mosaic tile shape for the lion's share of their form, but use cut pieces of those squares to add shapes to a design a mosaicist can't achieve with small square --usually curves.

Fine cut mosaics are the most complicated and labor-intensive of these three categories. they abandon the square tile shape all together. Cut mosaics don't rely on distance for you to be able to see them. They look as good up close as they do from far away. My friends at Hakatai will make you a custom, cut mosaic based on a supplied photo or other image too. Love Van Gogh's "Starry Night?" Do you have a pressing need to have it rendered in glass tile in your foyer? Talk to the kids at Hakatai.

03 March 2008

Google does architecture. Brace yourself.

Virtually all architecture and design is drawn on a computer any more. A couple of us can still render by hand, but I would hate to have to rely on my hand drawings to make a living. Hand renderings take a long time to produce and editing them means starting over. That's bad. Although they are pretty and I consider them to be art. But that's just me.

About 20 years ago; the worlds of drafting, design and architecture started to adopt AUTO-CAD (Computer-Aided Drafting) and other CAD-based drawing programs. AUTO CAD and its derivatives changed an industry and allowed creative professionals a means to experiment with shapes and sizes in a virtual environment. Contemporary CAD programs allow one to draw in two dimensions and then preview in three dimensions. CAD has a pretty steep learning curve and as professional software, a pretty hefty price tag. For the last 20 years, the several thousand dollar price tag and learning curve have functioned as a pretty effective barrier to entry. However, something landed on my desk a couple of weeks ago that's going to change all of that.

My dear friends at Google have rolled out a new software product called Sketch Up. Sketch Up comes in two versions; a free one for household use and a professional version that costs $500. It's not only reasonably priced, it works better than what we use now.

The world of Interior Design and Kitchen Design in particular are held captive by a irritating piece of CAD-based software called 20/20 that has a lock on the industry. I know of no one who uses it for any reason other than that they have to. 20/20 is as cumbersome as it is unstable and that's being kind. Since the company who makes it has no competition, they never need to improve it. About the only thing I trust it to do is crash unexpectedly. An architectural drawing program that can't add and subtract reliably is a problem waiting for a solution. An entire profession that ready to rise up in revolution is a market waiting for someone to come to the rescue.

Enter Google and Sketch Up. I downloaded it a couple of weeks ago and have been playing around with it since. It rethinks a lot of the ways that CAD works and streamlines the process of creating a rendering. Even though it's streamlining the process, it's not cutting any corners. I cannot get over the level of control left in the hands of the operator.

The biggest difference between Sketch Up and CAD is that you draw in three dimensions in Sketch Up. This takes a little getting used to when you're accustomed to drawing in two dimensions. But man, is it cool or what? It can pull off a rendering so quickly it makes my head spin. I whipped out this bathroom in about two minutes this morning. It's basic of course, but I was trying to make a point. Drawing the same bathroom in 20/20 would have taken a half an hour.

Changing that bathroom to a living room with a different color scheme took a whopping four minutes. The same change would have taken another half hour in 20/20 not including re-boot time, because an operation like that would have made it crash at least once. Sketch Up is amazing.

The home version will allow you to draw architectural renderings, or package designs or make art. It will also enable you to draw a building and then insert it in your copy of Google Earth. Astounding!

Go get your own copy!

http://www.sketchup.com/

01 March 2008

Out! Out! Damed lawn!

My beloved St. Petersburg Times is running an article in their Homes section today that concerns another great idea in the quest for sustainable development. There is a movement afoot, albeit a small one, to rethink the great American lawn. Here's the link: http://www.sptimes.com/2008/03/01/Homes/Lawn_begone__Replacin.shtml

According to research conducted by the University of Florida's department of Agricultural Engineering, 62% of the potable water supply in Central Florida gets sprinkled onto lawns and landscapes. Nationwide, the figure is 58%. http://irrigation.ifas.ufl.edu/

I'd be curious to see how much the plant to the left, St. Augustine grass, costs the Florida economy. Hmmm. Faced with a lingering drought and a burgeoning population, labeling this and all turf grasses as a menace wouldn't be an extreme measure. That the Florida Aquifer is on trouble is beyond debate. One need only drive across Alligator Alley and see the wreckage of the Everglades to know that something's wrong. Watch an algae bloom unfold in an estuary or body of water in the aftermath of a summer thunderstorm. The fish gasping for air at the surface are being choked out by algae fed by residential fertilizer run off. Landscaping practices in Florida and the rest of the country as they are currently conceived are unsustainable.

Municipal water supplies are a public resource and decisions regarding its use an continued supply are of grave, public concern. A suburban half acre of lush, green St. Augustine is behind Florida's current water woes. It is not sole province of the Left to be concerned about this. Re-thinking the American lawn is a viable route of exploration to think our way out of the current drought and to avoid further water problems down the road.

Today's Times story was a brief-how to guide to follow to remove a lawn and replace it with less demanding landscape plants. It linked to a blog on the subject, http://www.lesslawn.com/ and to a web site from the state of Florida that is a resource for what sorts of plants can make up a healthy, sustainable Florida landscape. The state website, http://www.floridayards.org/, is a tremendous place to read more about xeriscaping (the practice of using low-maintenance and native plants in landscaping).

Expecting people to replace the typical landscape to the left overnight is ridiculous and a fool's errand, unfortunately. The good life taking part in a grassy back yard is pretty deeply ingrained. However, urging people to replace parts of their lawns gradually is bound to be met with more acceptance. So if that water-hogging vista could be made to look like this one, the people who live there can cut their water use by 30 to 40 per cent. They get a more inviting and interesting place to live and it costs less money to maintain.

Less water, fewer pesticides, less maintenance, fewer resources and it looks good. It is time Florida, it is time.