NZTA (New Zealand Transport Authority)

Installation: New Zealand Transport Authority – Smales Farm
Specifier: Pelorus Architecture
Installer: Comflor Ltd
Product: Chenille Time Prohibition & Blueprint Form

The beauty of this installation lies more in what is under the carpet tile, not what the actual pattern is.

A bit strange but let me explain.

All the camera's around Auckland’s roads (in particular the motorways) are fed through to this NZTA space. We are talking lots of screens and lots of cables. To facilitate this, the space has a raised access floor which houses all the cabling.

Normally raised floors have a 600mm x 600mm grid. Carpet tile manufacturers then make a 600mm X 600mm tile with toggles or magnetic strips that fit onto this substrate. Not using adhesive and having easily picked up carpet tiles.

However, Interface, the global carpet tile specialists looked at this solution and said, it’s wrong, we can do so much better. So the solution is

1. Use standard 500mm X 500mm tile – cheaper for the customer, easy to get spares and no special production runs with minimums required should changes to the floorplate happen in the future – ie future proofed.
2. Use Tac-tile – Interface’s patented no glue installation system – tiles still easy to remove if you need to get under the floor.
3. And most importantly by using this system, the end user gets 3 huge benefits
   • No unsightly gaps in tiles compounded by the gap in the raised floor
   • As carpet tiles cross over the raised floor grid ensuring a great looking floor, they also ensure that should the raised floor have gaps that allow airconditioning to escape undirected then the carpet tile will add another layer of protection to prevent this happening.
   • So easy to re-instate once uplifted for work to happen underneath.

And this is the installation at Smales Farm. Fit for purpose and smart on the top pile, extremely sophisticated and fit for purpose on the installation.