Making Spaces into Places Blog

The benefits of biophilic design

The Power of the Flower Design Trends

Floral designs in interior design have always been popular due to their versatility and adaptability. Modern flower motifs are big and bold, with exaggerated proportions and contrasting colours.
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Design Trends: Terrazzo

Terrazzo is one of the most traditional surface finishes, already going as far back as the ancient Romans and Greeks. For centuries, terrazzo was seen as one of the most renowned and luxurious floorings with an extremely durable character.
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Pantone - VeryPeri

Pantone has announced its Colour of the Year 2022: PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri. According to Pantone it's a vibrant colour that displays a spritely, joyous attitude and dynamic presence that encourages courageous creativity and imaginative expressions. We asked Dorothé Kessels, our Global Director Design, about her thoughts on this new Colour of the Year.

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Marmoleum Stories

Each of us has our own story. And each of us will interpret a space in our own unique way. The same can be said of architects and designers: they, too, are individuals after all. A designer who is truly invested in their work will use their heart as well as their head, interpreting briefs and making design choices based on their own lived experience.

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2021 Trend Report

At the beginning of August, our design team launched its 2021 Trend Directions report, giving insight into the current design and flooring trends and the trends we see for the coming year. Marijke Griffioen, Senior Designer Concepts, and Thomas Eurlings, Senior Designer Vinyl, explain how this report came together and what they believe are the most important trends to follow.
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Marmoleum Stories - Daphna Laurens

"We love the Dutch word 'vormgever', literally a person who gives shape. Giving shape to thoughts, objects, products and spaces is what we do.”

In 2008 Studio Daphna Laurens was founded with the aspiration to combine industrial design, applied art and fine art. Daphna Laurens is the unification of Daphna Isaacs Burggraaf and Laurens Manders (both associates). The Eindhoven based twosome graduated at the Design Academy Eindhoven.

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Marmoleum Stories - Roz Barr

Roz Barr Architects is a London based architectural studio with a commitment to the careful crafting of architectural solutions through a process of making. A fact that is conveyed in the rigorous level of detail and research invested in their projects.

The practice is dedicated to producing high-quality and inventive designs - not as a means of producing architectural ‘statements’ as such, but through a belief that the ability to produce innovative and beautiful work emerges from the interplay between content, context, and a sensitivity towards client requirements.
Read the full article

Diversity, Better Together

The new Sarlon and Modul’up collection offers the most comprehensive and qualitative answer to all your needs with an unprecedented diversity of products. Margareth, Head of Vinyl Design at Forbo Flooring Systems, explains the story behind this collection.

Read the full article

Biophilic Design A Healthy Dose of Nature

Research into new circular materials, responsible materials sourcing and zero-emissions manufacturing processes: these are just some of the ways in which an increased respect for the environment is evident within the building sector. On an interior design level, this elevated environmental consciousness is expressed in a trend for sustainability. With this has come a blurring of the boundary between outside and inside. Most notably, through the trend for biophilic design.
Read the full article

** Pantone Colour of the Year 2021**

At the end of 2020, Pantone announced its Colour of the Year 2021. And surprisingly, there are two colours instead of one this year. We asked two of our designers about their thoughts on the newest Pantone Colour of the Year.

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Fly Forbo 2019/2020 - Michael Heanue

With our annual Fly Forbo interior design competition now open for entries (this time with a twist – just for 2021!), we caught up with Michael Heanue, Founder and Joint Managing Partner of M Worldwide, to look back on their work on the Bank of Scotland flagship project, which took home the 2019/20 Highly Commended prize.

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Defeating Disruption in Education Fast Fit Solutions

The last thing that the nation’s education providers want right now is another period of disruption, especially after a year of national restrictions. However, when it comes to flooring refurbishments, adhesive free products can reduce installation time by over 50% and can save over 20% in installation costs compared to standard, glued down products, which helps to sidestep a range of potential application and curing issues. Lewis Cooper, our Education Segment Manager, explains more here.

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Forbo's End of Year Round Up

In a year that was unfortunately overshadowed by a global pandemic and where “social distancing” became a part of our everyday vocabulary, 2020 has been filled with challenges aplenty. However, here at Forbo, we stayed optimistic and ensured that we were doing all that we could to support our customers. Join us as we take a look back at some of our key moments from the last twelve months.

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Preparing for Autumn & Winter - Entrance Systems

Without a proper entrance flooring system, leaves, sand and dirt will find their way indoors and lead to scratches and wear and tear on your interior floor coverings. Intensively used floors – such as those in schools, shops, and office buildings – will consequently need replacing much sooner. So here are our top 3 tips for designing an effective entrance flooring system to help keep the outside from getting in.
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ESD Flooring in Healthcare

There are a range of different environments within a hospital that require protection from electro-static discharges (ESD) for the protection of patients, staff and equipment. But do you know how static discharge can be controlled? Garry Bateman, Head of Technical Sales at Forbo explains all here.
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Flotex in Ski Interiors

With the winter ski season just around the corner and travel restrictions starting to be lifted, Karen Wilding our Segment Marketing Manager for Leisure & Hospitality at Forbo, explains why Flotex flocked flooring is the ideal solution for creating safe, clean and healthy interiors within ski resorts, which also have the ‘wow’ factor.
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A Lesson in Education Flooring Design

As schools across the country prepare to welcome pupils back for the new academic year, Lewis Cooper, Segment Marketing Manager for Education, looks at the latest design advice from the Department for Education and explains how well-chosen floor coverings can help create effective learning environments.
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Project Rejuvenate - Fly Forbo 2019/20 Winner

The 2020/21 Fly Forbo competition will soon be opening for entries, so we thought we’d catch up with our 2019/20 winner James Hopkinson, Interior Designer and Partner at Blake Hopkinson Architecture, to find out more about his winning design ‘Project Rejuvenate’ for Parker Hannifin.
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Bringing the Great Outdoors Inside

As the benefits of bringing nature into the built environment becomes increasingly well documented, Janet Lowe, Head of Marketing UK and Ireland, discusses the soaring trend of biophilic design in the workplace and how the latest innovations in flooring can help to create spaces that reconnect employees with the great outdoors.
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Faust's Passion for Linoleum

A family business, Bavarian-based Faust Linoleum emphasises the creation of high-quality, sustainable and durable furniture, using Forbo's Furniture Linoleum material. We talk to Antonia Faust, Deputy General Manager, about the history of the company and how they work with this natural material, creating hand crafted items.
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Designing with Linoleum - Marmoleum

Linoleum is a 160-year-old innovation.
What makes this material special is its scope for endless new possibilities. One of the challenges is identifying these possibilities and translating them into a new visual that is in-keeping with the modern zeitgeist. But just what goes into designing linoleum? A seemingly straightforward question, one might think...

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World Design Day 2020

To mark this year's World Design Day on 27th April, we caught up with our Senior Designer, Sarah Foster-Smith, to find out what inspired her to become a designer and what being a professional designer really entails.
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Designing for longevity

Zero Carbon, Zero Waste

Sourcing for Circularity

To live within the planet’s means and have a sustainable future, we need to rethink how we use its resources. This is where circularity comes in: designing products that can be disassembled and reused at the end of their life, in a closed-loop system.

But what role does sourcing and raw materials play in achieving circularity in the flooring industry? Find out how Forbo Flooring is leading the way with a forward-thinking use of resources.
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Designing with Circularity in mind

Circular design is a considered and intentional approach to product design that seeks to eliminate product waste. It aims to create a closed loop whereby products are not thrown away at the end of their lives. Instead, they can be reused. For example, modular design is a common circular solution – it allows products to be disassembled and their parts reused in new products.

Circular Marmoleum

Today, full circularity of floor coverings is not yet happening on a large scale. Especially when the flooring is glued to the subfloor the solutions are limited, although this applies to the vast majority of resilient flooring in use today. That is why Forbo has taken on the challenge to fully recycle 13,000 m2 of 20-year-old Marmoleum floors into brand new Marmoleum.
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Future Proof Design

We started our collaboration with CooLoo to create a CooLoo Circular Canopy, made using Marmoleum waste material, which brings sustainability and high-end design together in a future-proof concept.

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COP26

Many believe this year’s UN climate summit COP26 in Glasgow to be the world’s last best chance to get climate change under control. Despite nearly three decades of talks, commitments laid out at Paris 2015 did not come close to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, and the window for achieving this is closing.

Circularity Forbo Recycling in Practice

At Forbo Flooring Systems, we are committed to transforming all our linear processes and products so they support the circular economy. Read more on how recycling at Forbo Flooring Systems is done in practice..

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Biophilic Design A Healthy Dose of Nature

Research into new circular materials, responsible materials sourcing and zero-emissions manufacturing processes: these are just some of the ways in which an increased respect for the environment is evident within the building sector. On an interior design level, this elevated environmental consciousness is expressed in a trend for sustainability. With this has come a blurring of the boundary between outside and inside. Most notably, through the trend for biophilic design.
Read the full article

Creating Better Indoor Environments Linoleum

It’s safe to say that 2020 was a year like no other. Global lockdowns have left many of us locked out of our normal office environments. Instead, legions of workers around the world are getting used to working from home and making the best of the current situation. The good news is that things will eventually return to normal. In fact, with growing hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel, a return to office life seems imminent. As we plan for this eventuality, it’s important that businesses look for new ways to ensure their buildings are as healthy and hygienic as possible. At Forbo, we believe this means creating better indoor environments; a process that must start from the floor up, explains Mark Bauer, Environment Specialist at Forbo.
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A Circular Economy Mission - Linoleum

Finding a solution to the ongoing environmental challenge will require more than just work, it will require a transformation. From decoupling our dependency on unsustainable fossil fuels, to ensuring that less raw materials are sent to waste, societies and economies around the world need to fundamentally change. However, as we begin to look forward, it’s important to know alternative systems exist, which could make a difference. One such approach, which might represent a workable solution is a circular economy. At its core, the concept is based around the principle of using less virgin materials, as well as designing waste out of the production process, reducing pollution and keeping products and materials in use and naturally regenerating. Mark Bauer, our Environment Specialist at Forbo explains more here.

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Building a Greener Educational Future

Covid 19 has demonstrated that we should take nothing for granted, with the pandemic highlighting how we respond, adapt and manage changing circumstances, and so it seems appropriate that we take a closer look at how these changes are affecting the buildings that education is delivered from.
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Building the Carbon Neutral World - Linoleum

Around the world, more and more cities, countries and businesses are adopting pledges to become net carbon neutral. The UK is leading the pack, recently becoming the first major economy to pass net zero emission targets into law. In this blog, our environmental specialist, Mark Bauer, details more about the concept, what it is, how it can be achieved and why products like Marmoleum are helping in this endeavour.
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Global Recycling Day - March 2020

Global Recycling Day is organised by the Global Recycling Foundation and highlights the critical role that recycling has in preserving our natural resources and protecting the health of our planet. This year the theme is #RecyclingHeroes as the foundation looks to recognise the people, places and activities that demonstrate how recycling can contribute to ensuring an environmentally stable planet.
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CO2 Neutral - A Conscious Choice

With slow progress being made on the Paris climate agreement, Mark Bauer, Environmental Specialist at Forbo Flooring Systems, explains why we should all be striving to make a conscious choice when it comes to choosing building and interior products – as well as taking a closer look at the difference between carbon offsetting and carbon neutral manufacturing.

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Back to the Office

Responsive Healthcare Spaces

The importance of making hospital spaces responsive to patient needs to promote health and wellbeing has never been so vital. Can elements like flooring specification really make a difference? In this blog, we explore how paying attention to flooring at the specification stage can contribute to the overall patient experience as it has done at a children’s hospital in Leeds.
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Designing for Education

For educational facilities, design and material choices can have a significant effect on the health, wellbeing and performance of students and staff, as well as impacting the long-term maintenance costs. Lewis Cooper, our Segment Marketing Manager for Education here at Forbo, looks at the role flooring plays in creating a high-quality learning environment.

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Designing for Healthcare

For healthcare buildings, both the design of the interior spaces and the materials chosen play an important role in supporting the health and wellbeing of those who use the building. These decisions can also have a significant impact on the maintenance requirements and costs. Here Sharron Kapellar, our National Framework Manager, considers how the flooring can help create a comfortable and healing environment.

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Design for Student Living

We caught up with Jasper Sanders, Design Director at Jasper Sanders + Partners, a leading architecture and interior design studio based in Ancoats, Manchester. The team was responsible for the design of The Refinery, one of our Fly Forbo 2020/21 winning projects, and with the academic year underway we were keen to understand design for student living, and importantly how to get it right.
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Making Student Digs Sound

Whether you call them digs, flats or halls, student accommodation is an important part of the university experience. In fact, even the most diligent student will probably end up spending more time inside their student residence than at their actual place of study. Whether it’s providing a place to revise, to socialise or simply to unwind, good quality student accommodation can make or break the enjoyment of further education. That’s why it’s so essential for these areas to be well-designed and accommodating to their multi-purpose use – especially when it comes to sound. Elizabeth Bushell, Key Account Manager Student Accommodation at Forbo, explains more here.

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Flooring for Multiple Occupancy Building

Multi-occupancy buildings are becoming increasingly common, particularly across Britain. Whether it’s the rise of student accommodations or the growth of private rental and build to rent properties, this form of development is more popular than ever before. As such, it’s now important for architects and specifiers to have greater knowledge of how to choose floor coverings within multi-occupancy buildings, to ensure they are selecting the right solution. Here, we detail our five top tips for choosing floor coverings.

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Improving Student Accommodation

The education sector has been among those most affected by COVID-19 and the restrictions put in place to limit the transmission of the virus. Here Elizabeth Bushell, our Key Account Manager for Student Accommodation, explains how this will impact student accommodation and how the correct choice of flooring can help overcome these challenges.

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Class in Session Acoustics in Education Design

For specifiers, education facilities can pose something of a challenge when it comes to controlling noise. For one, school children can be very loud in both a vocal and a somatic sense and not always willing to quieten down should they be asked. But that’s not the only problem; many schools were built in an era (20th Century) where acoustic performance was not as well understood as it is now. As such, many classrooms up and down the country suffer from indoor environments that enhance excess reverberation and limit speech intelligibility. Unfortunately, the knock-on effects of this phenomena can be damaging. As well as adversely affecting the concentration levels of classroom occupants, poor acoustic management could also be contributing to a host of physical health problems in students.

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Defeating Disruption in Education Fast Fit Solutions

The last thing that the nation’s education providers want right now is another period of disruption, especially after a year of national restrictions. However, when it comes to flooring refurbishments, adhesive free products can reduce installation time by over 50% and can save over 20% in installation costs compared to standard, glued down products, which helps to sidestep a range of potential application and curing issues. Lewis Cooper, our Education Segment Manager, explains more here.

Read the full article

Aged Care - The DSDC and it's Product Accreditation Service

As you may know from reading our past blogs, we have had a working relationship with the University of Stirling’s Dementia Services Development Centre (DSDC) since 2016, but do you know what the DSDC actually is and what it does? Read on to learn more about the centre and its product accreditation service.
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Aged Care - Dementia -Inclusive Interiors

September 2020 marked the 9th World Alzheimer’s Month, an international campaign launched by Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) to raise awareness and challenge the stigma that surrounds dementia. This life changing disease currently affects an estimated 850,000 of us in the UK, and while this figure may seem shocking, it is sadly predicted to rise, reaching more than one million by 2025 and two million by 2051. Here, Donna Hannaway, our Segment Marketing Manager for the Care Sector at Forbo, explains the importance of designing a dementia-inclusive interior, with tips on how to achieve this.
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Government Buildings - Flooring in Prison Design

Good, carefully considered design is vital in any environment where people work or live. This is especially true for prisons where those in custody will usually spend 24 hours a day inside and as such, the environment will have a significant impact on their mental state and well-being. In this blog Sharron Kapellar, National Framework Manager, takes a look at the role flooring plays in prison design.
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Office - Towards a new work landscape

Whereas a number of years back, flexible working meant being able to work at any workstation in the office, the term has now evolved to encompass pop-up work places. After all, you can work any time, any place these days.

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Aged Care - Refurbishments with Minimal Disruption & Stree

There is a lot to consider when it comes to care home refurbishments, with the main question being: how do care homes safely and effectively manage their residents without causing too much disruption and distress? We caught up with Mark Jackson, Key Account Manager – Care Sector, to find out why opting for adhesive free floor coverings can limit the impact on daily operations.
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Education - A Lesson in Education Flooring Design

As schools across the country prepare to welcome pupils back for the new academic year, Lewis Cooper, Segment Marketing Manager for Education, looks at the latest design advice from the Department for Education and explains how well-chosen floor coverings can help create effective learning environments.
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Offices - The Future of Workspaces

The speed in which the world has changed over the last few months has been staggering, and this of course has affected the office space and the way that we work. We catch up with our Segment Marketing Manager for the Office Sector, Donna Hannaway, to discuss what the Future of Workspaces might look like.
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Offices - Bringing the Outdoors Inside

As the benefits of bringing nature into the built environment becomes increasingly well documented, Janet Lowe, Head of Marketing UK and Ireland at Forbo Flooring Systems, discusses the soaring trend of biophilic design in the workplace and how the latest innovations in flooring can help to create spaces that reconnect employees with the great outdoors.
Read the full article

Private Rental Sector - Keeping it Quiet

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), excessive noise seriously harms human health and interferes with people’s daily activities, whether that is at school, at work, at home or during leisure time. Getting the acoustic comfort right in private rental accommodation is therefore paramount, after all, unwanted noise pollution could lead to countless complaints, poor sleep quality and the risk of losing tenants. In this blog, Julie Haake, our Key Account Manager for the PRS/BTR sector takes a look at how the choice of flooring can play a fundamental role in acoustic design.
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Offices - Is CAT A+ The Future?

As almost all elements of the commercial workplace are being questioned, and developers are awakening to the need to provide options for tenants who don't want the costs or hassle of creating their own workplace, we teamed up with MIX magazine for a round table discussion on whether Cat A+ is the future?
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Retail - Making An Entrance

Enhancing the shopping experience starts from the moment a customer sets foot in the building. As part of our ‘Floored It’ blog series, Louise Serjeant, Key Account Manager for Retail, discusses the importance of choosing an effective entrance flooring system for retail environments.

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Healthcare - The Rise of BIM in Healthcare

It is clear that Building Information Modelling (BIM) is steadily taking its place at the forefront of the construction sector. Here, we look at how the many benefits of BIM are becoming most apparent within the healthcare sector, assisting in the efficient construction of our country’s new, modern and technologically advanced medical facilities.

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Forbo Escapes 2020/21 Winner

Forbo Escapes 2019/20 Runner up Helen Shelley

Fly Forbo Highly Commended

We caught up with Alessia Crescentini to learn all about her award winning project design for the Bank of Scotland flagship store in Glasgow and her foray into the new field of set design for performance.

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Marmoleum Stories

In 2019 French designer Pauline Esparon graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven, NL, with a project on linen. Coming from Normandy she developed a love for flax at an early age. This strong affinity inspired her to research new potentials for the discarded raw primary materials from the linen production process. With new techniques, she succeeded to create a series of unique designs that show new qualities of the flax fibre.Read the full article

Marmoleum Stories

Remi Versteeg is an architect, and founding partner at the Dutch architectural firm Beyond Space, which is based in Amsterdam. They design buildings, interiors, products and everything beyond. In their projects they aim to create something which is extremely grounded in logic, so that the result becomes distinctive again. An example of their unique signature was the launch of the Boring Collection in 2016 during the Salone del Mobile in Milan.
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Marmoleum Stories

In April of 2020 Jani Kristoffersen established the architectural studio Campus with architects Johan Berglund and Andreas Ferm in Stockholm Sweden. Before co-founding Campus Jani headed Guise with Andreas. Guise worked with projects relating to culture in a broad sense.

Currently Campus is working with KaDeWe in Dusseldorf, with a new museum of Photography in central London and on new retail experiences for department store Nordiska Kompaniet Stockholm. They are also commissioned to transform the former meat packing district in Stockholm into a new urban destination. Projects that range from urban scales down to detailed interiors.
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Behind the Collection - Marmoleum linear

Earlier this year we refreshed our Marmoleum Linear collection. Designed to bring warmth and comfort to a space, to reflect the changing trends of public buildings, we caught up with Marijke Griffioen, our Senior Designer here at Forbo, to learn more about the range and what inspired the update.
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Design for Student Living

We caught up with Jasper Sanders, Design Director at Jasper Sanders + Partners, a leading architecture and interior design studio based in Ancoats, Manchester. The team was responsible for the design of The Refinery, one of our Fly Forbo 2020/21 winning projects, and with the academic year underway we were keen to understand design for student living, and importantly how to get it right.
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Behind the Collection - Coral

Our market-leading Coral entrance flooring collection has had a refresh. With new designs, colour palettes and constructions, we caught up with Jason Holmes, Head of Design - Textiles, to gain an insight into the updated collection, while learning more about the concept of zoning and why specifying an entrance flooring system is so important.
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Marmoleum Stories - Roz Barr

Roz Barr Architects is a London based architectural studio with a commitment to the careful crafting of architectural solutions through a process of making. A fact that is conveyed in the rigorous level of detail and research invested in their projects.

The practice is dedicated to producing high-quality and inventive designs - not as a means of producing architectural ‘statements’ as such, but through a belief that the ability to produce innovative and beautiful work emerges from the interplay between content, context, and a sensitivity towards client requirements.
Read the full article

Loughton contracts

This month, we caught up with Beverly McFarlane, Sales Director at Loughton Contracts to learn more about her career, her experiences working alongside Forbo, as well as the benefits of being a CFA member.

Marmoleum Stories - Francine Houben

Francine Houben is a Founding Partner and Creative Director of Mecanoo Architecten. With her practice, she has gained international acclaim. Her work ranges from theatres, museums and libraries to neighbourhoods, housing and parks. Each design is founded on observation of people, location, culture and climate. This analysis amounts to designs that respond to current needs yet are also prepared for (un)predictable change.

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Behind the Collection - Tessera Struktur 1

Following the launch of our brand new microtuft carpet tile collection, Tessera Struktur 1, we caught up with Senior Designer, Sarah Foster-Smith, to gain deeper insight into where she got her inspiration from, why she chose the microtuft style and what interior designers can achieve by specifying the new range.

Marmoleum Stories - Francesca Sciarmella

In 2014 Francesca approached Forbo Flooring Systems for her Master thesis on Linoleum. Together with her fellow student Marta Polenghi she was looking for a material with a “story to tell”. In Marmoleum they found the perfect match; an - in their view - often misunderstood product with a long and interesting history. Their quest was to offer a fresh perspective on Marmoleum and to make people reconnect with it.

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Diversity, Better Together

The new Sarlon and Modul’up collection offers the most comprehensive and qualitative answer to all your needs with an unprecedented diversity of products. Margareth, Head of Vinyl Design at Forbo Flooring Systems, explains the story behind this collection.

Read the full article

Marmoleum Stories - Christien Meindertsma

Since graduating from Design Academy Eindhoven in 2003 Christien Meindertsma has developed a unique design approach. In her work she thoroughly explores the life of objects and raw materials. In some instances, the result of her projects may be the record of a process itself. In others, her investigations lead to commercial products.

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** Carola Seybold** 2021 Trends

Colour delivers emotion, creates association, supports global brand recognition and wellbeing. It defines our world. Via a special zoom session earlier this year, our team joined Carola Seybold, Director of Business Development at Pantone, to learn more about the colour trends that we can expect to see more of in 2021 – and we are excited to be able to share these with you in this blog.

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Fly Forbo 2019/2020 - Michael Heanue

With our annual Fly Forbo interior design competition now open for entries (this time with a twist – just for 2021!), we caught up with Michael Heanue, Founder and Joint Managing Partner of M Worldwide, to look back on their work on the Bank of Scotland flagship project, which took home the 2019/20 Highly Commended prize.

Read the full article

Odile Decq ArchIdea 62 Interview

It’s safe to say that 2020 has been a year like no other. Global lockdowns have left many of us locked out of our normal office environments. Instead, legions of workers around the world are getting used to working from home and making the best of the current situation. The good news is that things will eventually return to normal. In fact, with growing hope that a COVID-19 vaccine could be available early next year, a return to office life seems imminent. As we plan for this eventuality, it’s important that businesses look for new ways to ensure their buildings are as healthy and hygienic as possible. At Forbo, we believe this means creating better indoor environments; a process that must start from the floor up, explains Mark Bauer, Environment Specialist at Forbo.

Read the full article

Jan de Vylder - ArchIdea 61 Interview

JAN DE VYLDER, FROM THE OFFICE ARCHITECTEN JAN DE VYLDER INGE VINCK, IS FASCINATED BY THE FRICTIONS OF DAILY LIFE. HE AIMS TO SEE AND EXPERIENCE ITS COMPLEXITIES. "I ENJOY CREATING LITTLE MOMENTS OF CONFUSION."

"God is in the details," the architect Mies van der Rohe proclaimed. The architectural office of architecten jan de vylder inge vinck (architecten jdviv) takes that famous epigram seriously: detail means everything to this Belgian architecture firm. Yet their attitude towards detail seems to be the very opposite of that of Mies van der Rohe. For example, they have picked out imperfections in the concrete finish of their Ledeberg Services Centre, Ghent, in bright red paint. Things that might drive other architects to fury or despair are transformed by architecten jdviv into a distinctive architectonic idiom of their own. The beauty of the blemish beats perfection; a shortcoming is changed into a cherished quality.
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Benedetta Tagliabue - ArhcIdea 61 Interview

The copious details – playful, colourful, joyful and often so abundant that even the term detail itself becomes blurred – are what characterizes the architecture of EMBT. The focus on detail seems to be a statement, given that elaborate and meticulous detailing is today anything but a matter of course. Does Benedetta Tagliabue, who founded Miralles Tagliabue EMBT twenty years ago with her late husband Enric Miralles, consider her approach to detail essential to her architecture?
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Tom Emerson - ArchIdea 61 Interview

A doorknob with a thumbprint, the elegantly rounded ending of a hand railing, roof lights clad with charred wood: like other projects of the architectural office 6a Architects, based in London and led by Tom Emerson and Stephanie Macdonald, the contemporary art exhibition space Raven Row has some eye-catching details, suggestive of sentences in a poem. In times when designing is often restricted to assemblage of prefabricated elements, this special attention for details seems rebellious.
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Thomas Eurlings - Meet the Maker

In the first of our Allura Meet The Maker blog series, we catch up with Thomas Eurlings, Senior Designer Vinyl at Forbo Flooring Systems, to find out more about his involvement in the creation of the new collection, what it means to him, and current design trends within the flooring industry.

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Arjen Roelofs - Meet the Maker

As part of our Allura Meet The Maker blog series, we catch up with Arjen Roelofs, Director of Research and Development and Forbo employee for over 28 years, to find out more about his involvement in the creation of the new collection, what it means to him, and what working in the Forbo R&D department really involves.

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Roy Schepers - Meet the Maker

As part of our Allura Meet The Maker blog series, we catch up with Roy Schepers, Product Manager LVT at Forbo Flooring Systems, to find out more about his involvement in the creation of the new collection, what it means to him, and the new products within the collection designed to make installation easier and quicker.

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Faust's Passion for Linoleum

A family business, Bavarian-based Faust Linoleum emphasises the creation of high-quality, sustainable and durable furniture, using Forbo's Furniture Linoleum material. We talk to Antonia Faust, Deputy General Manager, about the history of the company and how they work with this natural material, creating hand crafted items.
Read the full article

Michelle Hardy - Honest - Fly Forbo 2019 Winner

Filled with stunning architecture and inspiring art, each year we send our Fly Forbo competition winner on a trip of a lifetime to New York. As the deadline for this year’s competition looms, we caught up with 2018/19 winner, Michelle Hardy, Senior Creative at Honest, to hear about her time in the Big Apple.
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Anna Ray - Meet the Maker

Earlier this year, renowned textile artist, Anna Ray, took up a three-month residency at our Bamber Bridge factory, creating artworks inspired by the colours and yarns used in our carpet tiles, before premiering her creations at this year’s National Festival of Making in Blackburn, Lancashire.

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Student Challenge LISAA 2022

In April of 2021, Forbo Flooring asked a group of students from LISAA (L'Institut Supérieur des Arts Appliqués), the renowned Architecture & Design Institute in Paris, to participate in a Student Challenge. The project was so successful that it has now resulted in a second Student Challenge with a new group of LISAA students.

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The Power of the Flower Design Trends

Floral designs in interior design have always been popular due to their versatility and adaptability. Modern flower motifs are big and bold, with exaggerated proportions and contrasting colours.
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4 Top Reasons to go Adhesive Free

Across all sectors there has been an increase in demand for flooring solutions that can be installed quickly, with minimal disruption and downtime. But why is this? With hospitals, call centres and retail outlets offering 24-hour services, and education buildings and offices requiring refurbishments that need to be completed overnight, the very nature of commercial buildings is why time restrictions are becoming a pressing issue. Time restrictions are not the only issue the industry is facing though!

Challenging subfloor conditions, such as those created by permanently stuck down installations or damp and damaged subfloors, are also a general concern. As such, adhesive free floor coverings are becoming the solution of choice for specifiers, end users and flooring contractors, as they can help to overcome these challenges.

So, what are today’s top 4 reasons to go adhesive free?
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**CPDs* Time to Learn

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) enables architects and specifiers to proactively improve their skills and knowledge through certified learning. Over the last few years, we’ve been busy developing and refreshing our CPDs to ensure that we are providing you with the most up to date guidance. Read on for an overview of all the seminars that we can now offer – and make sure that you get booked in!

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Ear to the Ground Acoustics and Why it Matters

In this 3-part series, we will be exploring the influence and effect of sound in buildings, and how acoustics can be controlled and manipulated for optimal outcomes in specific environments. This week: acoustics and why it matters.
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Biophilic Design A Healthy Dose of Nature

Research into new circular materials, responsible materials sourcing and zero-emissions manufacturing processes: these are just some of the ways in which an increased respect for the environment is evident within the building sector. On an interior design level, this elevated environmental consciousness is expressed in a trend for sustainability. With this has come a blurring of the boundary between outside and inside. Most notably, through the trend for biophilic design.
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World Day for Safety & Health at Work

World Day for Safety and Health at Work in April marked an opportune moment to explore the topic of safety flooring – considering one third of all major workplace injuries are from slips and falls. Here we explain how to ensure you choose a sustainable and genuine safety flooring.
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To mark this year's World Design Day on 27th April, we caught up with our Senior Designer, Sarah Foster-Smith, to find out what inspired her to become a designer and what being a professional designer really entails.
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Global Recycling Day

Global Recycling Day is organised by the Global Recycling Foundation and highlights the critical role that recycling has in preserving our natural resources and protecting the health of our planet. This year the theme was #RecyclingHeroes as the foundation looks to recognise the people, places and activities that demonstrate how recycling can contribute to ensuring an environmentally stable planet.
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Go Adhesive Free with MagTabs

We recently approved the use of IOBAC’s innovative adhesive-free MagTabs™ system with our Allura Flex Luxury Vinyl Tile and Tessera carpet tile ranges. Here, Paul Woolvine, CEO at IOBAC, explains more, including the benefits for installers, building owners and tenants.

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Learning to Lay Linoleum

At Forbo, we know how important it is for installers to have the right training available to ensure high standards and the best result for customers. Therefore, we are proud to support the Flooring Industry Training Association (FITA) in delivering its courses. We spoke to Chris Smith from All Type Flooring, who recently completed the FITA Linoleum course, about his work and the training provided.
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The Lowdown on Nuway Barrier Matting - Tech Talk

In the UK, its a well known fact that we can’t predict what the weather will be like from one day to the next! However, what we do know is that when wet weather arrives, we see more dirt and moisture being traipsed indoors from the soles of shoes and treads of wheels. As such, ensuring you install an effective entrance flooring system, like our Nuway collection, is important.

With that in mind, we decided to catch up with Craig Thornhill, our Technical Services Manager at Forbo to learn all about our Nuway collection and how he became Forbo’s Nuway expert.
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Linoleum Keeping it beautiful for longer

Flooring plays an important functional and aesthetic role in building interior design. Linoleum is a popular choice of flooring for a wide range of interiors as it is hard-wearing, water-resistant, stain-resistant and available in a multitude of colours and designs.
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The Critical Role of Acclimatisation

My day time job is of course Head of Technical Sales and Support for Forbo Flooring UK Limited and in that role I too often see one or more of those basic elements overlooked.

I appreciate that site conditions and unhelpful site agents sometimes make it difficult, but I would like to use my blog this month to focus on one that I feel simply gets ignored and perhaps even treated as unimportant - Acclimatisation.

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Linoleum Nett Fit Seams

Unlike vinyl sheet, linoleum is produced using natural raw ingredients and, as such, has very different performance characteristics. One of these is the way in which the seams (joins between individual sheet pieces) in linoleum work. It is important to understand that whether seams are to be welded or not, they should always be cut to leave a nett fit (closed) seam. Linoleum, in common with sheet vinyl, should not be ‘gapped’ at seams to ‘help facilitate grooving and welding’, as is often seen on sites.

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Site Conditions

For this article, I have taken some existing guidance from the CFA Guide to Contract Flooring and extracts from relevant British Standards, as these pre-existing documents are readily available to view or purchase, and tried to add-in any other site condition related tips learned during my time in the industry. It is not an exhaustive list but hopefully will go some way in addressing and collating common issues and missed ‘best site practise’, faced by flooring contractors ahead of starting any fitting.

So, what should happen and what guidelines exist to assist the flooring trade?
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Installation Integrity

As a floor covering and adhesive manufacturer, Forbo is well positioned to understand the important relationship that exists between a floor covering, an adhesive and a subfloor.

The successful installation of a floor covering designed to be fully adhered is reliant on the selection of the correct adhesive, a suitable prepared subfloor and the recommended fitting guidance for all products being followed. Any breakdown in that sequence can lead to the installation integrity of whole or part of the fitment being compromised and potentially failing.

This article is designed to highlight some of the ‘must do’ and ‘best practice’ actions to ensure successful installations time after time.

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**CPDs* Time to Learn

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) enables architects and specifiers to proactively improve their skills and knowledge through certified learning. Over the last few years, we’ve been busy developing and refreshing our CPDs to ensure that we are providing you with the most up to date guidance. Read on for an overview of all the seminars that we can now offer – and make sure that you get booked in!

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Installing modular products

The flooring market has seen a definite design trend move towards a more modular product format. Lots of reasons; easier to move boxes rather than rolls, flexibility in fitting, more practical for modern offices re raised access flooring and ability to create mixed product use and designs.

Modular is the new term for tiles as it encompasses standard square tile sizes but also the new trend in rectangular planks and special shaped tiles such as Hungarian Point. This article will focus on fully bonded or tackified products with the purpose of highlighting common fitting requirements and best practise.

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Expansion & Contraction

You could be forgiven for thinking that this is going to be another article about expanding waistlines and what to do about it...

But no, this is my second technical article for 2021 which will hopefully highlight that expansion and the need to consider it, is a recurring theme in flooring. What I will try to do is cover the most common expansion topics to hopefully give a useful overview.

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Entrance Flooring Systems Needed, or just an unnecessary expense?

For Garry's first technical blog of the year, he focuses on a subject that has been a key element of most of his time in the flooring industry – entrance flooring systems (oftentimes referred to as ‘matting’).
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ESD Flooring in Healthcare

There are a range of different environments within a hospital that require protection from electro-static discharges (ESD) for the protection of patients, staff and equipment. But do you know how static discharge can be controlled? Garry Bateman, Head of Technical Sales at Forbo explains all here.
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From the Ground Up - Surface Regularity

The appearance, performance and durability of an installed floor covering will be determined to a large extent by the quality of the prepared subfloor and the conditions in which it is laid. Here, Garry Bateman, Technical Manager at Forbo Flooring Systems, discusses the importance of surface regularity in ensuring a flawless finish.
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