We are pleased to announce that the renovations are going smoothly as planned. The first of eight truck loads of interior “Canvas Prints” ( Island Girl ) have arrived at the warehouse. Installation will proceed starting on November 4th, 2024. Stay tuned for updated as we get them.
I am an electric heat distributor with products from 3 manufacturers available and am interested in adding electric floor heat, snow and ice melt and ice dam prevention products to the projects being built. These are obviously luxury items and items that make hotels, commercial buildings and residences more comfortable and safer to access. IE… tile floors, parking garage entrances, north facing building entrances, roofs over hanging walkways subject to icicle hazards.
Tile is a cold but durable and easy to clean product. It is specified in many hotels, commercial buildings and residences. It is always better warm! Adding this to the bathroom floor will make the room warmer and more comfortable. These can be individually controlled or controlled by a multi room system control. Multi room system control will allow the hotel or commercial building maintenance to operate the floor heat at a suitable temperature and keep operating costs down.
Parking garages and north entrances. These areas tend to get snow and ice built up and make them dangerous or hard to navigate. Having a snow and ice melt system in place to operate when needed keeps these areas safe to use. I have many systems to aid in making all of these possible and cost efficient.
Roof ice dam and icicle prevention is a critical area of concern especially in mountain towns and resorts. Eliminating ice dams and icicles should be a major consideration for these buildings.
Please let me know if I may be of assistance with any of these areas of interest.
Thank you for your time,
Solutions for all of your electric radiant heat needs!
www.electricheatservicesupply.com
Cliff Shumate
720-934-2528
The annual Interior Design Show (IDS), held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, returned last week, wrapping on Sunday, January 21, after a four-day run. The show featured hundreds of exhibitors, including Metropolitan Floors. The event saw an impressive turnout, with dealers, distributors, architects and design professionals in attendance.
For Metropolitan, IDS has been a long-standing tradition. “We’ve been attending IDS for many years,” said Wilf Selfe, vice president, of Eastern Canada, at Metropolitan Floors. “The audience this show brings with architects, builders, and designers is unparalleled. We hope to continue to foster closer relationships with the A&D community, closer relationships with builders and to showcase our new products and our mission as a company, at large.”
During IDS, Metropolitan Floors announced the 2024 Metropolitan Design Challenge winners, spotlighting Jenny Bae Huggon, Gigi Lombardo-Dybalski, and Natalie Guberney, all of whom attend Sheridan College. Their design, called “Origins,” was constructed and showcased at Metropolitan’s booth for attendees to admire. The installation invited viewers to interact with it through the use of a map, inspiring them to document their own ‘origins.’
Open to Ontario students enrolled in a post-secondary interior design program, the challenge awards the winning design with a cash prize of fifteen hundred dollars. “The challenge is all about giving back to the design community. It’s rewarding for us because we always look forward to seeing how students draw inspiration from the theme and use our products,” said Joe Cosentino, builder – commercial business manager, Eastern Canada, at Metropolitan Floors.
The design challenge is a manifestation of Metropolitan’s core values, an ethos to design the most sustainable and ethically made flooring. This year, the challenge took inspiration from Metropolitan’s Clean Floors program, a forest-to-floor quality assurance and environmental compliance program. The theme of the challenge, coined “Crafted with Conscience,” challenged participants to design an installation that gives both meaning and life to the phrase and incorporates Kentwood’s latest flooring designs.
The winning students were thrilled to have their design showcased at the event. “We were really inspired by how Kentwood knows the origins of their wood,” said Gigi Lombardo-Dybalski.
“It was such a fun project for us to undertake. We wanted to symbolize our connection to the earth but also to each other,” said Natalie Guberney.
“Our hope with the piece is that it provokes conversation amongst people as they view it,” added Jenny Bae Huggon.
During the show, Metropolitan also launched its new 2024 flooring designs. Featuring ten new and notable collections with beautiful selections from Kentwood and Evoke Flooring, the new offerings include extra-wide plank-engineered hardwood, luxury vinyl flooring for light to heavy commercial applications, timeless herringbone designs, and much more.
IDS 2024 marks the first of a series of Metropolitan industry events in 2024. More will roll out at select Metropolitan Floors studios and showrooms across North America this spring. These events will serve as the perfect opportunity for the A&D community to learn more about the brand and view their collections.
Explore the Kentwood engineered hardwood and Evoke luxury vinyl, laminate, rigid core, and Surge© flooring solutions manufactured and designed by Metropolitan.
The state of the hospitality industry—and the trends to watch—are discussed with IMEG Director of Hospitality Bob Winter in the first in a series of episodes featuring the firm’s market leaders.
“Last year, 2022, was a tremendous year in the market for design and construction,” Bob says, citing the recovery of occupancy rates as the industry emerged from the pandemic. “I have seen a little bit of a headwind this year with some of our projects due to the cost of construction and the cost of money.” However, he adds, there are still a lot of “pent-up opportunities that are coming online,” along with growing demand for more hotels in urban and resort environments.
Bob also sees a growing focus on sustainability and energy efficiency, as well as continued growth in properties with a focus on wellness. “Many of the major brands have wellness hotels that are really retreats and are located in places like Sedona or Palm Springs or in wilderness settings, but they’re also in top urban markets, too. These are places where people can go to experience various mind and body rejuvenation or even a much more focused healing and recovery experience, with medical staff and licensed therapists.”
Bob is no stranger to the concept of wellness retreats. In 1912 his great grandfather opened the Hotel Thermia Palace in Czechoslovakia, one of the world’s first wellness resorts.
“It was built on natural hot springs and there were mud baths; people from throughout central Europe would go there for treatment, primarily for rheumatism,” he says. Though no longer owned by the Winter family, the Thermia Palace exists to this day as a luxury spa and wellness hotel catering to clients worldwide. Those who cross the bridge onto the property pass a statue of a man breaking his crutch—a likeness of Bob’s great grandfather and a symbol of the retreat’s long-standing healing properties.
“It’s still a very popular place,” says Bob, who has visited the site.
The Winter family’s hospitality legacy transferred to the U.S. at the outbreak of World War 2, when Bob’s grandmother emigrated with her sons to the U.S. She soon became the country’s first female general manager of a major urban hotel, the Hotel Pearson in Chicago. Bob continues the family legacy today as IMEG’s director of hospitality.
“It’s the ‘giant circle’,” he says. “It’s been an interesting journey.”
Listen to the podcast: Podcast
We’re thrilled to unveil our newly designed website and invite you to explore architectural visualization by Studio Soba.
VISIT www.studio-soba.com
Experience a visual journey through our Projects page, learn about our distinct Services, and discover the creative minds behind Studio Soba on our About page.
Blown Design is a unique custom glass lighting company. Our Art Director, Martin Lukacka, is a former baseball player for the Slovakian national team and an Architect living in Prague. Our Head of Production, Andrej Gulyas, is the proud Dad of two young boys and leads our Workshop in northern Czech. Curtis Neuschaefer, our Blown Director, is a Florida snowbird who spends half the year in Prague and winters by the beach. Brought together by Crystal Glass (and Zoom!), this fusion has been a team for 8+ years, perfecting bespoke lighting in Europe, USA & South America. Our greater production team of master craftsmen are spread out over the Crystal Valley in Czech, with partners in Slovakia, Poland & USA. We are unique brand of custom glass lighting company. www.blown.design
She won!!! “My Girl with a Pearl” will be featured at the astounding Mauritshuis Museum near Amsterdam in the Royal Vermeer room. Home of the original “Girl with a Pearl” painted by Johannes Vermeer dated 1665.
The Hague, Netherlands. The Mauritshuis Museum announced their Ode to the “Girl with a Pearl Earring” by Johanne (Jan) Vermeer. The museum has selected a few artist from around the world to showcase artist’ depictions of the “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” Over 3500 creations were submitted, less than 200 were selected. The museum also houses the most prominent paintings by Johanne (Jan) Vermeer, “Girl with a Pearl Earring” painted around 1665. People travel to The Hague from all over the world to see Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” and creators from around the world create re imagine depictions.
The Mauritshuis Museum houses the Royal Cabinet of Paintings which consist of 854 objects, mostly Dutch Golden Age paintings. The collection contains works by Rembrandt van Rijin, Jan Steen, Paulus Potter, Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael, and several others. www.latoyajones.com
The Fox Blocks catalog of insulated concrete forms has been designed to ensure ease of use and structural integrity for every building need. Explore the many combinations of our building solutions – then contact us to explore options and costing. www.foxblocks.com
Although Madrid, the second most populous city in the European Union, is recognized as a major tourist hub for its diverse gastronomic and cultural heritage, the city has no beach life. That until now, because on the outskirts of that city, Crystal Lagoons will build Alovera Beach, its first Public Access Lagoons™ project on the Iberian Peninsula. Elsewhere in Europe the company is already developing PAL™ projects in the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Hungary and Turkey, as well as having already developed two real estate complexes in Spain (Costa del Sol and Murcia).
What are the main characteristics of this iconic project?
Alovera Beach will be the largest artificial beach in Europe, located in a Mediterranean urban area less than 40 minutes from the center of Madrid. The centerpiece of this resort will be a 2.1-hectare turquoise lagoon that will be open to the general public for the price of an entrance fee.
What benefits will this new complex bring to the region?
The project is an innovative concept, which will transform the municipality of Alovera and boost tourism in the Guadalajara area, positioning itself on the European map of technology, innovation and sustainability and as a unique reference point in outdoor water sports. The complex will be open all year round and expects to receive around 350,000 visitors annually.
The project, which will be developed by Crystal Lagoons in partnership with Grupo Rayet, will become a model for urban regeneration that will change the local landscape in a revolutionary way, have a high social impact and generate more than 330 direct and indirect jobs.
How will local residents benefit with the project?
Public Access Lagoons™ projects, also known as PAL™ developments, drastically change people’s lifestyles. They bring beach life and water sports possible in a city context, making going to the beach as close and as normal as going to the local park is today.
The body of water will be surrounded by an extensive, 1.6-hectare, white sandy beach and include sports facilities, a water park with slides and children’s pools, a water sports school for kayaking and paddle boarding and gastronomic services.
How do you address the current need to be a sustainable amenity?
Like all of Crystal Lagoons projects, the Alovera Beach lagoon will include the multinational’s sustainable technology, which allows the use of any type of water, consumes 30 times less water than a golf course and only half that of a park of the same size. Its filtration system uses only 2% of the energy of a conventional system and up to 100 times less chemicals than a swimming pool.
What are the main projects of Crystal Lagoons in Spain and Europe?
Alovera is the firm’s third project in Spain, which include the Alcazaba Lagoon (Costa del Sol) and Santa Rosalía (Murcia) residential developments. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Europe, Crystal Lagoons has just signed a master agreement to develop six PAL™ complexes in Prague, Warsaw, Budapest and Bucharest. The company also has a project in Turkey and is in advanced negotiations for projects in Italy (Milan, Verona, Rome and Naples), Portugal, Greece and Georgia. www.crystal-lagoons.com
LE SUEUR, MN – Cambria, the nation’s leading producer of American-made quartz surfaces, and a family-owned company, is excited to announce that it will open four new sales and distribution centers in the U.S. this spring, rounding out the company total to 22. Upon completion, the new facilities will provide Cambria’s business partners, trade professionals, and consumers within a 150-mile radius immediate access to Cambria’s award-winning quartz surface designs. The front portion of the buildings will feature state-of-the-art showrooms that will be open to the public. The three new builds are taking place in Houston, TX; Duluth, GA; and Manassas, VA; and a full gut renovation is underway at the purchased facility in Milford, MA. We are very excited to open our new sales and distribution centers while expanding our footprint across the country,” said Joel Peters, Director of Real Estate for Cambria. “The cities where these projects are located provide incredible economic opportunities for us and the local communities. Moreover, these buildings are much more than just warehouses—they will also serve as regional resources for the builder and remodeler trades, interior designers, and end-users.” Milford, Massachusetts In Milford, the 32,000-square-foot project sits on 3.7 acres of land at 357 Fortune Blvd., which is right off the bustling Interstate 495 corridor, southwest of Boston. Nearby entities include several retail centers, as well as healthcare organizations, grocery businesses, automotive dealerships, and more. At the Milford site, Cambria is remodeling an existing building and is transforming it into a world-class sales and distribution facility. Work is expected to be complete this May. Houston, Texas: In Houston, construction is underway on a 22,750-square-foot facility that sits on 3.7 acres of land at 13939 West Road. The location is about 22 miles northwest of downtown Houston and is located just off U.S. Highway 290. Nearby businesses include steel and electrical distribution companies, a freight-transport business, retailers, and many more corporate enterprises. The facility is expected to open in June of this year. Duluth, Georgia: In Duluth, work is underway on a 22,750-square-foot building, which sits on 3.3 acres of land at 2425 Meadowbrook Parkway. The location lies less than 30 miles from downtown Atlanta along Interstate 85. Nearby businesses include a variety of restaurants, hotels, an electrical supply company, a heating supply company, a book printing company, and more. The facility is expected to open this September. Manassas, Virginia: In Manassas, the 22,750-square-foot building will sit on 5.3 acres of land at 11975 Lexington Valley Drive, which is about 36 miles southwest of Washington, D.C. Nearby businesses include manufacturing companies, a logistics company, an advertising agency, a mechanical contracting corporation, a glass company, and more. Construction is expected to start this June and be complete in April 2023. Cambria’s industry-leading, iconic quartz surfaces are manufactured at its state-of-the-art one-million-square-foot slab manufacturing facility in Le Sueur, MN. From there, slabs are sent to sales and distribution centers across the U.S. Cambria is also in the process of adding an additional 50,000 square feet of space to its slab manufacturing facility, representing the fifth time in 15 years the company has expanded its Le Sueur facility. Cambria’s architectural firm of record for the four sales and distribution centers is Powers Brown Architecture, a renowned industrial, public institutional, and commercial interiors firm with a broad business portfolio. In addition to architecture, the company also specializes in both interior and urban design. For inquiries regarding Cambria’s real estate and/or capital expansion projects, please contact: Peter Rank, Cambria Development Manager, at 952-873-4800 or Peter.Rank@CambriaUSA.com. About Cambria: Cambria is the leading producer of American-made quartz surfaces and is a family-owned company. Cambria’s innovative designs are stain resistant, nonabsorbent, durable, safe, maintenance free, easy to care for, and backed by a transferable Full Lifetime Warranty. Cambria is sold through an exclusive network of premium, independent specialty retail and trade partners that can be identified at: www.CambriaUSA.com