When changes in flooring alter our spatial experience

Designers and architects have a mountain of modern, high-performance flooring options at their disposal. From standard choices like wood, carpet, ceramic tiles or natural stone; to heavy-duty commercial favourites like terrazzo, concrete or poured epoxy. Add less well-tread options like cork and leather and then multiply them all with imitation solutions like laminate and luxury vinyl, and it’s easy for decision-makers to get lost in indecision.

Despite the size of the marketplace, however, we tend to just make our choices and stick with them, using just one type of floor for each room. Not so in the case of the following four projects, which select and arrange various flooring types together in the same room, adding functionality to the floor and helping to improve how we interact with the spaces above.

As a unique aspect of Vietnamese medicine, ailments are often treated with traditional medicines that include natural ingredients. In a mixed-use residential complex in a rapidly developing area of Hanoi, the Traditional Clinic brings an informative and educational pharmacy space to the building’s street-level reception area, as well as treatment spaces up on the seventh.

‘The design is oriented around the utilisation of natural and traditional materials,’ explains ODDO architects, on the connection between the terracotta tiles and natural stone tiles of its flooring, and the natural properties of its prescribed medicines. Using both these two contrasting natural materials on the floor, however, allows the clinic to create an elegant curve that ‘not only decides each function, but also highlights the image of the traditional pharmacist, carefully and precisely concocting each dose,’ as ODDO architects describe, ‘helping patients to better understand, be reassured and trust in the methods of traditional medicine.’

After the concept for this dipping noodle bar was decided – early-format pixelated 8-bit video games of the retro-popular past – the flooring choice of square, white ceramic tiles was simple, and the surface could easily stretch up to cover the restaurant’s decorative walls, furniture and even condiment architecture, too.

Keeping tables in the raised group seating section low to the ground allows customers to casually kneel or sit cross-legged should they prefer, but in this instance, the use of ceramic tiles represents a restriction on comfort. By cutting the tiles away in seating spots around the table, the exposed spaces direct patrons on where to sit. ‘The ceramic tiles and carpet tile materials on the floor are ordinary, but look unique with the combination and forms,’ as architects 07BEACH explain, with the comfortable green carpet tiles reminding users of close-cropped video game grass, enhancing the three-dimensional in-game experience.

‘Inspired by the Noucentisme aesthetic, both in composition, colour, texture and materials,’ explain project architects SCOB, of the flooring installed in the LOOM offices at Plaza Catalunya in central Barcelona, the renovation project ‘reinterprets them as resources in the reorganisation of spaces.’ This strategy is used to rediscover the original structures and materials through ‘interior windows’, as Scob describes them, framing the natural, earth-toned wood floors, brick walls and vaulted Catalan ceilings.

These geometric drawings on the surrounding surfaces serve not only to direct users to the history of local architecture and its relationship with the materials, but also help to direct users around the layouts themselves, establishing shared work points and reinforcing natural interactions.

As a brand of performance running footwear, On has an affinity with health, well-being and nature. Because of this, project architects Specific Generic and Spillmann Echsle Architekten laid out the company’s 17-storey building’s functions as ‘experiences along a mountain trail, running up the building, as they explain, ‘with steps getting narrower and steeper with each floor, just like climbing a mountain.’

Separated into different ‘neighbourhoods’ where each represents various stages of the mountain path, the lower floors feature earthy tones with topographic maps of surrounding mountains translated into carpets and upholstered furniture. Central floors were inspired by forests and lakes with ‘rocks literally lifted from nature’ positioned in inspiring meeting spaces. And among the clouds of the uppermost floors that seem to touch the sky, an all-encompassing blue library is softened by a thick, deep blue carpet.

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