Article Number: 8889
Healing Art for Children’s Hospitals - How Waterjet Technology Turns Floors Into Colorful Murals for Kids
As a family navigates the hallways of Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC), the parents keep up a cheerful patter to preoccupy their 6-year-old son, who is scheduled for surgery. The elevator doors open, and they step onto a vibrant floor mural swimming with colorful images of starfish and sea grass. Suddenly, the hospital doesn’t seem so scary anymore, and the child breaks into a smile.
Increasingly, architects are incorporating art as a foundational design element rather than adding it on after construction. Nowhere is this as important as children’s hospitals, where playful artwork and design have been shown to reduce anxiety and stress, mitigate the need for pain medication and contribute to the healing process.
“Evidence shows that spaces that are colorful, fun and uplifting help children heal faster,” says James O’Neil, the principal at the interior design firm Inventure Design, which specializes in the design of children’s hospitals and cancer centers. At CHOC, Inventure Design was subcontracted by FKP Architects in Houston to provide the interior design for a new Tower II as well as the first cosmetic upgrade in 20 years for Tower I.
“Data even shows that viewing art shortens a patient’s stay,” says O’Neil. “And that’s the whole idea, to get kids back to being kids and reducing costs for parents and insurance companies.”
Increasingly, designers are looking to the floor as a cost-effective way to incorporate art into the design.
“Art has been able to travel down the wall and become part of the floor,” says O’Neil. “That’s the true Holy Grail for interior design—art that serves many purposes. Floor art at the elevator landing serves the purpose of way-finding and makes kids feel better. And it’s part of the building, so it’s not going to move, it’s not going to fall off, it’s not going to fade.”
In the past twenty years, resilient flooring has undergone a design renaissance, largely due to waterjet and laser technology, which can cut intricate designs into resilient flooring of all kinds—from sheet vinyl to luxury vinyl to rubber to carpeting.
“We had floor art in the past, but it was limited to squares and angles, what could be cut by hand,” says O’Neil. “Waterjet technology makes curves and intricate, detailed designs possible. All of sudden these design ideas that we’ve had all along—that are proven to make a difference to patients—are possible. This new technology has opened up the floor as a canvas for all that.“
Technology Meets Art
“There used to be two or three expert cutters who did all of the logos and custom cutting of carpet and resilient flooring in the country,” says Jim Belilove, co-founder and president of Creative Edge. “During the last 20 years, they have retired and waterjet technology has opened up a world of design possibilities in vinyl, rubber, linoleum and other resilients, bringing floor design to an entirely new level.”
Waterjet employs extreme pressures of water by forcing it through 1/8- inch tubes at two times the speed of sound before it emerges from a tiny head of sapphire, ruby or diamond as a micro-cutting tool.
“Fabrication with water-only cutting systems allows for tight tolerances in the fabrication process with no discoloration along the edges that is caused by heat or contamination in other types of cutting methods,” says Belilove. “In addition, the cut edges are sharp with little to no bevel from top to bottom of the cut.”
For sheet vinyl, linoleum and carpet materials—which cannot be saturated with water—Creative Edge uses one of the newest cutting systems available, ultrasonic fabrication, which features the edge quality of a knife and CNC control to fabricate custom designs with the same tight fit and precision as waterjet.
Maintaining Design Integrity
For Tower I at CHOC, Inventure Design specified colorful floor murals at each elevator landing of the tower’s nine floors.
When it came time to bid on the flooring installation, Dave Triepke, president of Universal Metro, Inc., a leading Southern California installation sub-contracting firm, knew he was going to need extra help to implement the design.
“Although we have done hundreds of installations of sheet vinyl in hospital settings, this job required over 4,000 square feet of intricately designed accent areas using 20 different colors,” says Triepke. “We knew it was beyond anything we could create by hand, so that’s when we called in Creative Edge Mastershop for the precision cut with waterjet technology.”
Triepke had worked with Creative Edge in the past as mutual members of Starnet Worldwide Commercial Flooring Partners, and was aware of the company’s track record in fabricating custom floors in a wide variety of healthcare settings.
He also knew that Marty Thomas, as national sales manager of the largest and most experienced waterjet company in the world, served as a kind of consultant for other companies and could guarantee the design integrity the architects were looking for.
“We spent about two days meeting with Jim Belilove and Marty Thomas to determine how they would cut the design, how they would ship it, how we would install it,” he says.
Triepke says the general contractor on the CHOC project was unhappy with an earlier attempt at fabricating the floor art. “In that job the Armstrong Medintone sheet vinyl was rolled for shipping, which doesn’t hurt the integrity of the vinyl, but because the vinyl has memory, the pieces don’t fit together as precisely so the integrity of the design is disturbed,” explained Triepke.
“As a solution some of the pieces were heat-welded together, which blurred the edges and detracted further,” he says. “I knew that with their long years of experience and skilled staff, Creative Edge would avoid this problem and deliver a fabrication with the necessary precision without the need for remedial measures such as heat-welding, which not only ruined the design integrity but raised the cost significantly.”
Triepke was right—with the help of Creative Edge, Universal Metro was able to come in with a bid $50,000 less than his competitors and won the project. Together Universal Metro and Creative Edge were able to complete the job on time and with the crispness of the design intact.
In specifying the fabrication for the job, Creative Edge insisted on shipping the vinyl flat in pieces up to 10’ long. Rolling was not an option, according to Marty Thomas. “Rolled material, especially when cut into patterns tends to distort and contract. To maintain fit, we always ship flat.”
The waterjet-cut vinyl fit perfectly at the job site. “Because of the debacle created by the rolled vinyl shipped by the previous fabricator, the installers had some real fears at the beginning of this project,” says Thomas. “Even right down to installation, there was some uncertainty on their part. I was able to walk them through that and after they got the first one down, they called and said, ‘Hey, it went great!’”
The fabrication by Creative Edge and installation by United Metro was so successful that United Metro was awarded two 2014 Starnet Design awards—the Gold Winner People’s Choice and the Silver Winner Unique Installation awards—for the CHOC cosmetic upgrade from the Starnet Worldwide Commercial Flooring Partnership.
“The floor art was a great improvement to our tower, and the work is very nice and tight,” says Michael Swain of WBSA, the associate architects for the project. Agrees O’Neil, “We were really happy with the work by Universal Metro and Creative Edge.”
Cost-Effective Art
The experience at CHOC points to a major advantage of architectural waterjet: it’s cost effective. “I can come up with the most beautiful design in the world, but at the end of the day, if no one can afford it—it’s not going to heal one child,” says O’Neil. “I can’t say enough about the fact that waterjet technology is now so cost-effective. Technology has caught up and allowed us to do a number of things we would have loved to do before but were not available from a cost standpoint.”
With the floor the biggest unused design element in most buildings, with more unadorned footage than any other surface, floor designs are no longer limited to small logos or centerpieces, but can extend throughout the building.
“Children’s hospitals are my absolute favorite thing to work on,” says O’Neil, “because you’re working with a clientele that is frightened and scared and you can make a huge difference in a child’s life—whether it’s just making them smile when wheeled into surgery or they’re coming to a clinic for a difficult examination. There’s a lot of reward in that—that you can see and feel and hear that you’ve made a difference.”
Increasingly, architects are incorporating art as a foundational design element rather than adding it on after construction. Nowhere is this as important as children’s hospitals, where playful artwork and design have been shown to reduce anxiety and stress, mitigate the need for pain medication and contribute to the healing process.
“Evidence shows that spaces that are colorful, fun and uplifting help children heal faster,” says James O’Neil, the principal at the interior design firm Inventure Design, which specializes in the design of children’s hospitals and cancer centers. At CHOC, Inventure Design was subcontracted by FKP Architects in Houston to provide the interior design for a new Tower II as well as the first cosmetic upgrade in 20 years for Tower I.
“Data even shows that viewing art shortens a patient’s stay,” says O’Neil. “And that’s the whole idea, to get kids back to being kids and reducing costs for parents and insurance companies.”
Increasingly, designers are looking to the floor as a cost-effective way to incorporate art into the design.
“Art has been able to travel down the wall and become part of the floor,” says O’Neil. “That’s the true Holy Grail for interior design—art that serves many purposes. Floor art at the elevator landing serves the purpose of way-finding and makes kids feel better. And it’s part of the building, so it’s not going to move, it’s not going to fall off, it’s not going to fade.”
In the past twenty years, resilient flooring has undergone a design renaissance, largely due to waterjet and laser technology, which can cut intricate designs into resilient flooring of all kinds—from sheet vinyl to luxury vinyl to rubber to carpeting.
“We had floor art in the past, but it was limited to squares and angles, what could be cut by hand,” says O’Neil. “Waterjet technology makes curves and intricate, detailed designs possible. All of sudden these design ideas that we’ve had all along—that are proven to make a difference to patients—are possible. This new technology has opened up the floor as a canvas for all that.“
Technology Meets Art
“There used to be two or three expert cutters who did all of the logos and custom cutting of carpet and resilient flooring in the country,” says Jim Belilove, co-founder and president of Creative Edge. “During the last 20 years, they have retired and waterjet technology has opened up a world of design possibilities in vinyl, rubber, linoleum and other resilients, bringing floor design to an entirely new level.”
Waterjet employs extreme pressures of water by forcing it through 1/8- inch tubes at two times the speed of sound before it emerges from a tiny head of sapphire, ruby or diamond as a micro-cutting tool.
“Fabrication with water-only cutting systems allows for tight tolerances in the fabrication process with no discoloration along the edges that is caused by heat or contamination in other types of cutting methods,” says Belilove. “In addition, the cut edges are sharp with little to no bevel from top to bottom of the cut.”
For sheet vinyl, linoleum and carpet materials—which cannot be saturated with water—Creative Edge uses one of the newest cutting systems available, ultrasonic fabrication, which features the edge quality of a knife and CNC control to fabricate custom designs with the same tight fit and precision as waterjet.
Maintaining Design Integrity
For Tower I at CHOC, Inventure Design specified colorful floor murals at each elevator landing of the tower’s nine floors.
When it came time to bid on the flooring installation, Dave Triepke, president of Universal Metro, Inc., a leading Southern California installation sub-contracting firm, knew he was going to need extra help to implement the design.
“Although we have done hundreds of installations of sheet vinyl in hospital settings, this job required over 4,000 square feet of intricately designed accent areas using 20 different colors,” says Triepke. “We knew it was beyond anything we could create by hand, so that’s when we called in Creative Edge Mastershop for the precision cut with waterjet technology.”
Triepke had worked with Creative Edge in the past as mutual members of Starnet Worldwide Commercial Flooring Partners, and was aware of the company’s track record in fabricating custom floors in a wide variety of healthcare settings.
He also knew that Marty Thomas, as national sales manager of the largest and most experienced waterjet company in the world, served as a kind of consultant for other companies and could guarantee the design integrity the architects were looking for.
“We spent about two days meeting with Jim Belilove and Marty Thomas to determine how they would cut the design, how they would ship it, how we would install it,” he says.
Triepke says the general contractor on the CHOC project was unhappy with an earlier attempt at fabricating the floor art. “In that job the Armstrong Medintone sheet vinyl was rolled for shipping, which doesn’t hurt the integrity of the vinyl, but because the vinyl has memory, the pieces don’t fit together as precisely so the integrity of the design is disturbed,” explained Triepke.
“As a solution some of the pieces were heat-welded together, which blurred the edges and detracted further,” he says. “I knew that with their long years of experience and skilled staff, Creative Edge would avoid this problem and deliver a fabrication with the necessary precision without the need for remedial measures such as heat-welding, which not only ruined the design integrity but raised the cost significantly.”
Triepke was right—with the help of Creative Edge, Universal Metro was able to come in with a bid $50,000 less than his competitors and won the project. Together Universal Metro and Creative Edge were able to complete the job on time and with the crispness of the design intact.
In specifying the fabrication for the job, Creative Edge insisted on shipping the vinyl flat in pieces up to 10’ long. Rolling was not an option, according to Marty Thomas. “Rolled material, especially when cut into patterns tends to distort and contract. To maintain fit, we always ship flat.”
The waterjet-cut vinyl fit perfectly at the job site. “Because of the debacle created by the rolled vinyl shipped by the previous fabricator, the installers had some real fears at the beginning of this project,” says Thomas. “Even right down to installation, there was some uncertainty on their part. I was able to walk them through that and after they got the first one down, they called and said, ‘Hey, it went great!’”
The fabrication by Creative Edge and installation by United Metro was so successful that United Metro was awarded two 2014 Starnet Design awards—the Gold Winner People’s Choice and the Silver Winner Unique Installation awards—for the CHOC cosmetic upgrade from the Starnet Worldwide Commercial Flooring Partnership.
“The floor art was a great improvement to our tower, and the work is very nice and tight,” says Michael Swain of WBSA, the associate architects for the project. Agrees O’Neil, “We were really happy with the work by Universal Metro and Creative Edge.”
Cost-Effective Art
The experience at CHOC points to a major advantage of architectural waterjet: it’s cost effective. “I can come up with the most beautiful design in the world, but at the end of the day, if no one can afford it—it’s not going to heal one child,” says O’Neil. “I can’t say enough about the fact that waterjet technology is now so cost-effective. Technology has caught up and allowed us to do a number of things we would have loved to do before but were not available from a cost standpoint.”
With the floor the biggest unused design element in most buildings, with more unadorned footage than any other surface, floor designs are no longer limited to small logos or centerpieces, but can extend throughout the building.
“Children’s hospitals are my absolute favorite thing to work on,” says O’Neil, “because you’re working with a clientele that is frightened and scared and you can make a huge difference in a child’s life—whether it’s just making them smile when wheeled into surgery or they’re coming to a clinic for a difficult examination. There’s a lot of reward in that—that you can see and feel and hear that you’ve made a difference.”
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