Sculptural Flooring

Ok, floors are flat, but not this one. Commissioned by a large landscape architectural firm in London for a project site in Seoul, this is the first of about 1200 modules of sculptural flooring, each 7' x 7' square. It is designed around our unique Extreme Wood Bending (TM) process. Each module has 14 solid Red Oak planks, 5/4 thick by 6" wide, by about 8' long, compressed while still green to be made flexible using a proprietary process, then cold bent to the desired shape, then kiln dried to fix the shape. Please review my website to find more information about wood compression and Extreme Wood Bending before initiating questions on the process here.

The modules go together to form about 60,000 sq ft of undulating, solid hardwood decking in an indoor setting, under a very large glass atrium roof that connects two upscale shopping malls, 2 office towers and a large hotel complex designed by one of the worlds leading architectural firms headed by starchitect Richard Rogers.

The concept is somewhat like a yacht deck, with contrasting expansion joints in-between each plank. There is a structural sub-deck below the planks that we also built. The planks run linearly throughout this park, but they bend up and over to form benches, pathways, amphitheaters, and landforms. There is a river, waterfall, bamboo forest and giant rock shards that the modules abut. The whole thing cascades from one main floor onto 5 additional floors within the atrium space. At this point, only this module has been built, to help work out design and fabrication issues. I've worked with the landscape architects for over a year to get this far, and the next steps are exciting as I enter a bid stage followed potentially by a 2 year fabrication stage.