Japanese architects design golden concrete flooring

TANK, a Japanese architecture company, has recently created an unusual floor covering for a project it is working on in Kyoto.

The architects are renowned for their unusual but innovative designs and their latest project, which is taking place in the centre of Kyoto, features a set of concrete floors that are specifically designed to crack. Once the flooring has succumbed to the desired outcome, it is then filled with a gold resin.

For the vast majority of installers, the main objective is to ensure the concrete flooring they lay is smooth, solid and does not crack. However, this particular type of flooring is supposed to do the opposite. TANK has renovated an apartment in Kyoto using cement flooring with a gold epoxy-resin used both to hold the flooring together, and to give it a special effect.

This technique was designed to emulate traditional Kintsugi methods of fixing cracked pottery, in which the fragmented pieces of the item in question were glued together, with the seams then covered in a gold powder to enhance the item’s imperfection. This is done to show that imperfect things can also have beauty.

The word ‘Kintsugi’ roughly translates as “repair with gold” and, if this is a technique adopted by flooring specialists, it could see perceptions of concrete flooring change to be associated with style as well as function.

In terms of the TANK project, company principal Naritake Fukumoto transformed an old and “drab” flat into something more interesting and innovative to create a small guesthouse, which has been named the Xchange Apartment, and offers short-term residency to artists.