Terrazzo, the speckled, indestructible flooring of airports and outdated condo lobbies, is a artistic reuse star: it was developed within the fifteenth century by Venetian marble employees who embedded stone remnants in clay to pave terraces—therefore terrazzo. In twentieth century America, the end was fabricated from stone chips and cement polished with an electrical grinder—look down at Radio Metropolis Music Corridor, the Washington Monument, and the Hollywood Stroll of Fame. In recent times, epoxy and polyacrylic binders got here in, making the fabric extra versatile and in style once more—if much less environmentally pleasant.
We lately featured a West London kitchen–see Occasion within the Again—that opened our eyes to a sustainable, newish terrazzo spinoff composed of wooden scraps certain in bio-based resin. Two UK corporations presently supply what one calls Timber Terrazzo and the opposite TreeAzzo. Made by hand to be used as counters, backsplashes, and flooring, they’re out there in a variety of colours, all sturdy, scratch-resistant, and patterned in a confetti of wooden castoffs.
No two sheets of wooden terrazzo are precisely alike. After the resin and wooden are blended, they’re left to treatment then sanded to reveal the wooden, polished, and completed with a food-safe, pure laborious wax oil or lacquered to be used in high-traffic space. In contrast to stone-based terrazzo, wooden terrazzo might be drilled or reduce to dimension with wood-working instruments. Foresso makes use of a CNC machine to make tongue-and-groove flooring and wall paneling.
It comes with a backing of plywood or fiber cement (to be used as ground or wall tiles); pricing on request. Havwoods is UK-based however out there within the US and has an open-to-the-public NYC showroom at 151 West 18th Avenue.
