Optical Illusion Floor
This optical illusion carpet, spotted in a Paris video game store, provides an illusion of a vortex floor.
Leather Belt Floor
(Belt) strapped for cash? Forget ‘affordable’ for a minute and just imagine the curious combination of feeling aged leather beneath your feet, and the look of vintage belts lining the floors of your home. Leather flooring is fairly unusual, but these upcycled belt designs are unique ? each one hand-crafted and with individually-selected old belts.
OK, but the price? Over 600 dollars for the round mat shown above from BranchHome and over 70 dollars per square foot for the floor tiles from Ting. (Link | Via)
Penny Floor
A floor literally tiled with thousands of copper pennies? it’s pretty surprising to look down and see them when you walk into The Standard Grill in The Standard Hotel, New York. The design was selected by the restaurant’s designers, Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch of New York design firm – Roman and Williams.
Radiant Heat Floor
Take off your shoes and feel the warmth coming up through that radiant heat flooring. It’s not only one of the coolest ways to get warm (no pun intended), but it’s also really energy efficient because, unlike traditional heating systems, you don’t lose the heat. With traditional baseboard heating or forced hot air heating, a lot of the energy you use to heat your home is wasted because much of the heat produced is immediately lost. But with radiant floors, that warmth is transferred directly to you as you come in contact with the floor. And it takes advantage of something we all know – hot air rises – so when the heat is generated underneath the floor, it does what it’s supposed to, which is go directly up. Aside from the fact that it keeps your indoor temperature up, and your heating bills down, it’s just plain fantastic.
Aerial Photo Floor
Check out the Flying Carpet next time you’re in Sacramento. Created by California-based artist Seyed Alavi, the carpet is an aerial view of the Sacramento River as it flows for 50 miles, between the California towns of Colusa and Chico. The 18-foot-wide, 150-foot-long image is woven and dyed into the carpet covering a walkway that connects the main parking lot and Terminal A. Alavi won a competition of more than 100 artists that submitted proposals for upgrading the walkway.
Salt Floor
Every once in a while, though, we run across someone who has taken the industry to a whole new level. Japanese Artist Motoi Yamamoto has found his medium in grains of salt – billions and billions of them. Yamamoto adheres plain table salt to floor surfaces, creating extremely intricate patterns & landscapes. The result is pretty amazing and can be a dizzying optical illusion if you stare too long. To prep, the artist draws the most complex mazes and labyrinths imaginable, plotting out his design.
His creations are for exhibition only and aren’t meant for permanent floor design, which is fortunate, because it’d take just one mildly rude friend to undo hours upon hours of work.
Puzzle Floor
This floor is something that stands out from the crowd. The new Puzzle Floor elicits expressions of surprise and amazement. A perfect solution for children’s bedrooms, but not only. Available in 13 colors, the tiles can be mixed for unique, personalized installations.
Human Traffic Floor
Alistair Bramley’s Dimension laminate flooring is a futuristic take on laminate floor design. The patterns are created using the natural movement of people within a set environment. Obstacles such as furniture are incorporated into the floor design. Video footage of how people used the room space was captured, processed and then printed onto the floor. This takes bespoke flooring to the next level.
Etched Floor
Some prefer the raw texture of hand-scraped hardwood floors, while others want the modern look (and low costs) of laminate wood flooring. These patterned wooden planks provide artistic relief somewhere in between ? an honest contemporary take on classic material and installation approaches.
This decorative flooring series from Mafi provides a fresh outlook on manufactured floors, etching designs that range from abstract floral patterns to playfully embossed stick figures. The pre-engraved slats are shallow enough not to collect dirt and dust (at least in theory), but deep enough to be felt underfoot by bare feet or with socks ? each features a darker ?burned’ look or a consistent surface treatment where variation is seen only by reflection, light and shadow.
Interactive Floor
Billed as the world’s first truly "sustainable dance club", Club Watt is based in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and aims to use 50 per cent less waste and 30 per cent less energy than a typical club. To achieve its goals, it’s working to the green guidelines of a non-profit organization known as the Sustainable Dance Club.
As well as generating energy, the dance floor has an interactive element. As you dance, its appearance changes through the LED lighting embedded in the panels, which are made from recycled materials.
