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Italian hardwood flooring manufacturer Listone Giordano sits at the epicenter of chic plank design. Take, for instance, their mind-bending Slide parquet. Straight from the company’s sustainable Natural Genius collection, which they describe as “redefining the aesthetic rules of classic wooden boards and common laying patterns,” comes this unique flooring composition featuring geometries that fit together like a giant ground-plane puzzle.
Slide in Zeritale (left), image via Iterni; Slide in Avana (right), image via Trentini
Listone Giordano are globally credited as the inventors of engineered wood flooring and tongue-and-groove technology. They work with renowned designers to imagine such out-of-the-box flooring options for their various special collections. Italian furniture designer Daniele Lago was selected to custom-create Slide, which has already been put up in residential projects in New York and Milan.
Image via Lisone Giordano
One project in particular, Zaha Hadid Architect’s tower for the CityLife complex in historic Fiera Milano, features the fun flooring inside its Penthouse One-11. The 300-square-meter [3,200-square-foot] double-height apartment is clad in Slide from top to bottom as both flooring and wall paneling in one bedroom. The distinctive shapes and their turtledove oak color unify the surface of the living space, covering every area except the entrances and the kitchen, according to Bluebell Products.
Interior of Zaha Hadid Architect’s CityLife tower; image via CityLife
Slide is engineered wood flooring, meaning it’s composed of a thin layer of natural wood on top of a plywood base. The sustainable oak wear layer is 3.5 millimeters thick, while the supporting Birch multilayer core is 9 millimeters thick. It’s finished with a natural oil treatment and is antibacterial. Each parquet can also be produced with a counterbalanced multilayer, shrinking the top layer to 1 millimeter and boosting the module’s overall thickness to 13 millimeters. This thin design easily allows the wood to be cut into such stark shapes.
Image via Pinterest
Image via Bluebell Products
Slide can be installed in numerous methods that highlight its irregular diamond, triangular and trapezoidal laying patterns. Lago designed the product on the premise of Leonardo da Vinci’s golden ratio. Such a small number of classic shapes can lead to unlimited compositions. In the case of the CityLife apartment, the resulting floor composition enhances the iconic geometries found in Hadid’s designs. The twisting floor pattern matches the bold curvatures and clean lines seen on the building and inside the apartment, as well.
Possible patterns for installation of Slide; image via Listone Giordano
Slide was also installed inside Midtown Manhattan’s Museum Tower in 2015. Designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects in 1985, the 52-story skyscraper includes 240 luxury apartments that feature high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows. Domoarchitecture’s Asdrubal Franco and Onsite Project Consulting’s Andres Azpurua recently renovated one of the interior living spaces with the whimsical look of Slide. The dark brown modules enrich the apartment’s bright atmosphere and nicely contrast with the largely white furnishings.
Interior of Museum Tower residence showing Slide wood flooring; image via Listone Giordano
Projects like these showcase the innovative formations found in contemporary parquet flooring. Not only that, but they reveal what companies like Listone Giordano are doing to take traditional wood flooring design to a new scene-stealing level. The more compelling the floor, the more the client will want to show it off.
Calling all architects, landscape architects and interior designers: Architizer's A+Awards allows firms of all sizes to showcase their practice and vie for the title of “World’s Best Architecture Firm.” Start an A+Firm Award Application today.