The floor has more: Bauwerk Parkett

When does your day start? The moment you emerge from your slumber as your eyes open? One of my colleagues once said it takes a good half an hour or so to "find himself again" each morning. For me, it's when my feet touch the floor.

There's something quite primal about skin coming into contact with the ground beneath you, as you feel your weight in the world once more. It's significance is symbolic, yes, but very much physical and psychological. "I exist!," it says.

In the increasingly abstracted, hyper-digital world we inhabit, these moments of analogue, haptic connection take on particular importance. They serve to remind us that we have bodies. (This may sound over the top, but our growing addiction to digital devices takes us out of the here and now, and so often robs us of our time.) And, in doing so, provide a vital, mindful counterpoint to our virtual existence, which would threaten to disrupt our health.

If there’s one flooring manufacturer that understands the relation between materials, design and well-being, it has to be premium Swiss parquet producer Bauwerk. Founded in 1935, it has built up over the decades a covetable know-how in high-end wood-flooring fabrication that both draws on tradition and embraces innovation.

Architects and interior architects who understand the central role the floor plays as an architectural-surface element (just think about the sizeable area over which it plays out) have long turned to Bauwerk for their collection of over 350 parquet products, each the result of considered development and expert production.

But if good design has at its chief priority the user experience, design professionals and other specifiers appreciate that Bauwerk’s smarts are about more than just optics. Visual texture is important, but so is literal texture, along with flexibility when it comes to planning and an emphasis on healthy living via a judicious choice of materials.

When it comes to wellness in Switzerland, Peter Zumthor’s landmark Therme Vals is indisputably its poster child. Faced in linear pieces of quartz stone that provide an organic continuity with its immediate natural context, the spa – which, together with its attendant hotel, has been renamed 7132 – is all about escape from the everyday and a return to the essential.

But quartz isn’t the only material here to provide a tactile nourishment for the senses. In both the 7132 Hotel and the so-called House of Architects (which features rooms by such big-hitting names as Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma and Thom Mayne), Bauwerk parquet provides both an optical and haptic warmth for guests, while underscoring the connection with nature’s dramatic stage-set visible through the buildings’ generous picture windows.

Hospitality of a different kind at the internationally renowned Hochgebirgsklinik in the Swiss alpine town of Davos, where first-rate medicine meets a first-rate stay for patients. “We relied on natural materials and quality Swiss products,” explains Jan Gloeckner, project manager at OOS architects, “to create a hotel-like environment that’s beneficial to recovery.”

Central to this was the flooring. In addition to furniture made of smoked oak, wood and leather, Bauwerk’s Villapark Oak Cream parquet was specified, not only for its aesthetic value, but also for its ability to withstand high levels of intensive cleaning. “The flooring was sealed in such a way that the wooden pores were closed. The sealing is hardly visible and the parquet looks natural, fitting the design requirements of the concept.”

In the prestigious Swiss boarding school that is the Lyceum Alpinum, meanwhile – situated above the village of Zuoz in Engadin – Bauwerk flooring was chosen to provide a sophisticated architectural transition between the old house and the new building, the latter completed in 2015. “The herringbone pattern conveys the tradition and history of the school,” says the institution’s Head of Finance & Services Roman Grossrieder of the Oak Cream parquet that was specified, “while the wooden floors in the public areas provide a warm and welcoming atmosphere.”

With a school full of students, sound-management is, naturally, also an issue. Here, Bauwerk’s Cleverpark Silente technology came into play – an innovative system that reduces both ambient and impact sound thanks to special, pre-attached underlay. The result are optimised acoustics, and not only in the music room…

And over the border in Austria, Bauwerk has also been put to work. Award-winning office Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Paneum – an information centre and event location dedicated to the topic of bread, located in Asten and built for the Backaldrin company – features smoked-oak flooring that covers both the stairs and exhibition levels. “It fits well with the highly innovative, exposed-cross-laminated-timber interior of the museum’s self-supporting wooden shell,” explains design partner Karolin Schmidbaur.

Visitors circulate through the space, conceived of as a cabinet of curiosities, via a spiral staircase, and are invited to view exhibits (some of which are suspended from the top of the central atrium) from various perspectives. Yet, however high they climb and in whichever direction they’re looking, Bauwerk keeps them grounded.

© Architonic