[Greenbuilding] Cheap flooring (end-grain wood block)

[RT]

BCJohn mentioned end-grain flooring.

There's  small town, Columbus Indiana, where the town's main employer
(Cummins Diesel) pays the incremental design fees to have world-reknowned
architects design the town's public buildings so that in this little
community whose population was about 30,000 (when I visited years ago)
there are buildings by architects like Frank Llloyd Wright, both Saarinens
(elder and younger), I.M. Pei, Richard Meier, Roche Dinkeloo, Cesar Pelli,
KPF, SOM, Robert Stern,Robert Venturi, Gunnar Birkerts etc. (to name just  
a few).

    http://www.columbus.in.us///listings/index.cfm?action=showSub&catID=336&subcatID=3120&startrange=All&endrange=All&substart=M&subend=S&notify=1

One of the archies, (Roche IIRC) seemed to like end block flooring a LOT,  
because he used seas of it in Columbus. Cherry IIRC. One of the buildings  
was for the shop floor of the huge below-grade engine plant . Another was  
for the floor of a downtown mall ... clearly floors that would have  
extreme demands placed upon them.
End-grain flooring makes perfect sense for extreme service conditions if  
one must use wood. After all, that's what the best (butcher's) chopping  
blocks are made of.

Also, I once met an old fellow up on Georgian Bay who built himself a  
turreted castle out of the rocks that he harvested from around the  
shoreline. His hobby was to create wood block tapestries. He'd cut short  
blocks from a suitably-coloured species of wood and use his bench vise to  
compress it before inserting it into his tapestry.
The glue would cause the compressed block to swell up (same idea as wood  
biscuit joinery) and create tight  joints that were practically invisible.

Perhaps the idea could be borrowed for areas where the floor might need  
patching or perhaps to create a "feature" near the entrance of the cash  
register ?

-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom					AOD257
Kanata, Ontario, Canada

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