The Culture of the Floor

Abstract

A beautiful floor, a forgotten element, draws the eye down, a rare direction to view architecture. The presence of a floor, realized through travel, led to a curiosity about the patterns adorning the surface and an architecture generated by the floor. A pattern becomes a floor when lines turn into joints. The subtle interruptions of a pattern's repetition, revealed through geometric construction, establishes the boundary of a floor and the order of a room. In a series of rooms determined by the floor, the transition from one pattern to another, with respect to tectonics, creates the thresholds and fenestrations within the procession. The acts of making and ichnographic drawing, under the watchful hand of craft, directed this study of a floor as the principal architectural consideration.