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Cork floors provide a natural environment for art in a new gallery. Cork floors make a significant environmental contribution to the preservation of art at a new private museum and archives near Atlanta, Georgia. According to consulting director Gordon Lewis "Cork floors are stable, and they do not outgas into the sensitive preservation atmosphere. They provide thermal insulation, as we maintain strict temperature and humidity control, and acoustical dampening, which is quite important in a museum and archives setting. |
"Cork is well known for its thermal properties, critical in a temperature and humidity controlled facility like this. We have one gallery which is over 3000 square feet, with doors opening directly to the outside. Creating and maintaining the properly-controlled environmental conditions require contributions from all the structural materials, not just the HVAC systems." A number of factors were researched to determine that CorkDirect floating floor planks would be the most appropriate flooring for the Museum application. "Naturally," Lewis says, "the first concern was purity. Cork itself is hypo-allergenic, and CorkDirect floors do not have a plastic surface layer. We retained the original u.v.-cured acrylic finish they were supplied with, and did not add any site-finishing. We used the one-foot by three-foot interlocking planks which are have their own underlayment built in, which are glued to each other, not the subfloor, to make a single entity floating on the slab." An indoor air quality consultant and an expert in sustainable architecture applications were called in, and a group of other tests were run. "In addition to not outgassing, cork proved to have impressive resistance to atmospheric absorption, and to recover well after sustaining physical compression." The facility, like any commercial installation, faced the issue of the ability of cork floors to withstand traffic. "From the experiences of other commercial users we spoke with, we were able to determine anecdotally that cork floors performed well in various commercial traffic applications. In addition, we have extremely heavy works of sculpture on the floor, which we move from time to time. Recovery after compression is a critical specification, which the CorkDirect planks met very well." Lewis points out that "In a gallery, the viewer is intentionally over-sensitized to the way things look. For us, with so much sculpture standing on the floor, the cork surface actually becomes the background to the art itself. Our patrons will look at the floor much more, and with greater awareness, than people usually regard floors in public spaces." "CorkDirect floating floor planks met or exceeded our requirements in every way. Because they are technically correct for the preservation environment, the cork floors were an exceptional choice." |