by Brianna Crandall — June 18, 2014—Pastcraft’s new Mixed Materials collection, unveiled last week at the NeoCon 2014 contract furnishings show in Chicago, is marketed as the first collection of its kind, integrating carpet and resilient flooring side-by-side without interruption. The collection’s innovative engineering and design, which garnered the company a Gold Award in the Carpet: Modular category of the Best of NeoCon Competition, enables designers to designate spaces within open, collaborative environments using mixed materials and shapes.
“We set out to solve the greatest flooring challenge with collaborative spaces—and we did. Patcraft’s new flooring option provides unique alternatives for the commercial market to define spaces in ways that only walls and furniture have been able to do in the past,” said Patcraft creative director Pamela Rainey, ASID, IIDA, whose inspiration and team collaboration led the development of Mixed Materials. “We were inspired by designers and end users who need the ability to transition flooring in collaborative work and learning spaces. By using resilient and carpet tile without limitations, designers are liberated to create visual cues that better allow for the learning, creating, healing, selling, and collaborating that take place in open environments.”
Patcraft’s Mixed Materials collection is engineered so that the carpet and resilient work together—using different shapes as well as Patcraft’s 24″ square carpet tiles—eliminating past constraints and obstacles including transition strips, complicated installations, time-consuming cutting techniques, and abrupt starts and starts in the mix of hard and soft surfaces.
In creating the line, Patcraft’s design team found inspiration from designers and manufacturers who are seamlessly combining hard and soft materials, including wood, metals, fabrics, and other contrasting materials. Available in both carpet and resilient tile, the collection can be used to create unique patterns in the space including room-defining insets, large-scale graphic patterns, and wayfinding elements.
Mixed Materials—Resilient features:
- 19 colorways—nine woods and 10 metallics—within two styles (Wood Planx and Metallix)
- Made of 22 percent recycled content
- Eliminates the need for a transition strip by engineering resilient tile and carpet tile that are the same height
- Measures 5 mm as opposed to the 2.5-3 mm industry standard, helping to absorb sound and unexpected or unwanted noise
- 40-mil wear layer, adding to durability and providing further protection against scratching and indentations
- In*Place installation requires no glue or adhesives with certain installations
Mixed Materials—Modular features:
- Facet modular shape available in three textured patterns (Fabrix, Optix, and Geometrix)
- Allows for an easier transition around angles and corners, eliminating past needs to change materials, do a mitre installation, or stop and create an inset
- Constructed using Eco Solution Q fibers, which has one of the industry’s largest DPF (denier per filament) at 24, providing better protection from heavy traffic and other stresses
- Constructed using EcoWorx Tile backing, emits low VOCs, and contributes to LEED project certification
- Is a Cradle to Cradle-certified modular carpet collection
The Facet tile shape is based on a rhombus shape and was created to work in parallel with existing flooring shapes, including rectangular Mixed Materials resilient and Patcraft’s traditional 24″x24″ modular carpet. Metallix is available in both the Facet tile and rectangular 12×24 shape. Wood plank is only available in Facet tile.
EcoWorx Tile backing on the carpet modules also offers eight times greater tear strength, five times greater tensile strength (the force a substance can withstand before breaking), and two times greater delamination strength (the force needed to separate a material from an adhesive substrate) than regular polyvinyl chloride (PVC) tile backing, says the company. Weighing 40% less than traditional carpet backing, EcoWorx Tile modules are also said to be efficient and easy to store, transport and install.
Part of Shaw Industries, Patcraft is a leader in high-performance commercial flooring, delivering performance carpet tile, broadloom and resilient with innovative design and superior service to meet the needs of every market sector.
