Scott Parsons » Public Art

University of Alberta CCIS Video

admin — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 03:32:16 +0000

My terrazzo design for the University of Alberta is highlighted in this video, starting at about 1:25.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4MO4NYFaQo

Terrazzo Work Advances

admin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 07:30:46 +0000

The terrazzo link between the main science building and the north lecture theatres is nearly finished.

CCIS

admin — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:34:48 +0000

CCIS Awards:
2011 Canadian Terrazzo Award | Terrazzo, Tile & Marble Association of Canada
2011 Project of the Year | Terrazzo, Tile & Marble Association of Canada

This terrazzo floor installation is nearly 40,000 sq. ft. in size for the University of Alberta’s Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Science (CCIS). This new, state-of-the-art facility brings together students, professors and researchers from multiple fields of Science: Integrated Earth and Landscape Management, Nanostructures and New Materials, Resource Geosciences, Chemical Biology and Proteomics, Planetary Dynamics, and Physics. The floor is a ten-color epoxy terrazzo design depicting all of the sciences, from a plesiosaur to neurons, fractals, subatomic particles, and stars. The divider strip, which is the line work in my design, runs over 7 miles in length and more than 20,000 liters of epoxy was poured (5,000+ gallons). The plesiosaur by itself is 300 ft. in length. The terrazzo contains aggregates crushed from windshield glass, mining byproducts and various marble.

Like education itself, this floor offers a sense of journey and discovery. My design concept began as a response to the geometry of the planned built environment and the geometry of the research environment, with an emphasis on the open floor plate design and multiple points of view expressed in the architecture, multiple entries and passageways, and the plan view siting along the campus North Quad.

The gesture of connecting interior to exterior spaces is critical to the design: One could look out the North Theatre windows to the nearby North Saskatchewan River and recognize the link to fluid dynamics and see the river’s flow echoed visually in the floor; or connect the formation of ice crystals on the window outside as a diffusion limited aggregation in the form of a fractal in the floor. Or in another section, one can make the connection between the pattern in the floor and the symmetry witnessed in the seasonal migration of a flock of birds outside. When this happens, the world and its simple gestures become a much more meaningful and rich environment to discover in this moment of recognition.

“A human being is a part of a whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest…a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ~ Albert Einstein

Artist: Scott Parsons
Architects: ONPA, Edmonton, OT and Flad, Madison, WI
Terrazzo Strip: Franklin Terrazzo, Chatham, ON
Terrazzo: ANTEX Western, Edmonton, OT
General Contractor: PCL, Edmonton, OT

See the installation process under News.

CCIS Terrazzo Installation

admin — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:27:28 +0000

Update (Sept. 29, 2011): View photos of the finished floor at http://www.damnfineart.com/archives/838

I am currently at work on installing a nearly 40,000 sq. ft. terrazzo floor for the University of Alberta in Edmonton. The design is a collaboration with the ONPA and Flad Architectural design team for the Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences. The principal organizing element I have utilized for the floor design is to treat the surface with overlapping and interwoven imagery to visually bring together the multiple fields of inquiry: Integrated Earth and Landscape Management, Nanostructures and New Materials, Resource Geosciences, Chemical Biology and Proteomics, Planetary Dynamics, and Physics. To accomplish this, I began by searching out what we share in common. Art, like science, shares a deeply rooted bond in an emotional, if not spiritual, sense of awe, and artists, like scientists, often begin their work from careful observation. The world is full of expression and gesture if we remain receptive to the unexpected, the overlooked, or the forgotten. Walking across this floor should offer a sense of journey and discovery, like education itself. I would like for people to come, think, sit, and wonder—bridging their ideas and thoughts to what it is they have come here to study and what they see in the floor, combing what Loren Eiseley describes as the Immense Journey, one to the interior of the human mind.

What follows are a series of images of the terrazzo installation process underway. The terrazzo work is being performed by Franklin Terrazzo and ANTEX Western; PCL is the General Contractor. Final completion of the work will be the winter of 2010-11.

The first step is to clear any loose concrete with shotblasting (blastracking) and mitigate any cracking in the concrete subfloor with a crack suppression system.

Then the entire floor is coated with a flexible membrane that will allow the terrazzo to float over the concrete subfloor.

The design is printed out at one-hundred percent actual size and laid across the floor.

Then the design is cut into the membrane with a cutting wheel on a grinder.

Any complex strip areas are pre-fabricated on mesh, the rest is cut and bent in place.

Brass and zinc divider strip are attached to the floor with tacks or hot glue.

All joints are either soldered or brazed.

Then the strip is glued to the floor with epoxy, here is a detail of the strip work.

Final adjustments are made to the divider strip before the epoxy is completely set-up.

The epoxy resin is mixed (from parts A and B).

Stone chips, recycled windshield glass, mine byproducts, etc. are mixed into the epoxy.

The epoxy matrix is spread across the membrane with a trowel.

This is what the epoxy looks like in its rough form before grinding and polishing.

The epoxy is ground smooth with diamonds or carborundum and plastic disks progressively from 25 to 400 grit.

During the grinding stage, an epoxy grout is applied to remove any pinholes.

An entire section after a second grout coat.

Applying the sealer before the final wax coat and polish.

Here is a section after sealing.

Detail in the North Lecture Theatres. Note the different thicknesses of the divider strip and how that helps to suggest spatial relationships and depth in the floor design. Some strips will be easier to see because of their thickness, others will await discovery under the right lighting conditions and viewing angle.

And a portion of the finished North Lecture Theatre floor in the late afternoon sun.

Algorithmic Tapestry

admin — Sat, 24 Aug 2002 16:24:31 +0000

Algorithmic Tapestry

Awards:
National Honor Award: Floor of the Year | National Terrazzo and Mosaic Association
Golden Trowel Award | International Masonry Institute
Design Awards: Honor Award for Architecture | AIA Wisconsin Chapter

Reviews:
Art in America as the Best in Public Art from 2002
Architectural Record

Algorithmic Tapestry is a 10,864 sq. ft. seven-color 3/8-inch epoxy terrazzo public art floor for the Engineering Centers Building at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The design is based on geometric algorithms commonly used by engineers, with depictions of quasicrystals, nanocrystals, and a series of digital and analog references to computing technology and numeric systems from 20,000 years ago to the present.

Artist: Scott Parsons
Architects: Flad, Madison, WI and Kohn Pederson Fox, New York
Terrazzo Strip: Scott Parsons
Terrazzo: RD Roman, Rockford, IL
General Contractor: J. P. Cullen and Sons, Janesville, WI

Installation photos here.

Biomatrices

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 1998 23:29:35 +0000

Biomatices

Biomatrices are two 226 sq. ft. marble, granite, sandstone, and stainless steel public art floors located in the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment’s Laboratory and Radiation Services facility in Denver, Colorado. The two designs pair trefoil symbols of biotechnology with Arapaho iconography at the major pedestrian intersections within the facility, forming a visual matrix (ideogram) designating the air, water, and human environments upon which all activities of this facility flow.

Click on the above image and you will see a navigable 360 degree image file. This works on all Macs, and on Windows with QuickTime or DevalVR (480 KB) installed.

Click and drag with your mouse to rotate your viewpoint. Hold shift on your keyboard to zoom in. Hold Control (Ctrl) on your keyboard to zoom out.