Home Design and Improvement

Posts Tagged ‘light’

Off-the-shelf Italian Renaissance Waterfalls. Design firm revisits 150-year-old Ferciment technology to make light of a heavy subject.

STUART, FL (PRWEB) August 23, 2003

Parsons Design Group, a South Florida design/build firm, has revived the 150-year-old French ferciment technology to bring Italian Renaissance fountains and freefalling water features to the masses. The technology makes stone-based water features doable at a fraction of their normal weight. Correspondingly, production, delivery and installation costs are so greatly reduced that the otherwise high-end products, traditionally reserved for the privileged few, are now within the reach of each garden loving homeowner.

Â?Call it the democratization of the Italian RenaissanceÂ?, laughs Michael Dawsey, vice president of Parsons Design Group, Inc. Â?You get the classic designs without the princely sumsÂ?

High-end landscaping features like the massive scale, elaborate Italianate waterfall/fountains and other free-form waterfalls that PDG manufactures by hand have traditionally weighed tons because of the inherent weight of solid materials that are used such as stone, coral or concrete. No longer. By revisiting a construction process called ferciment, developed and patented in France in 1855, PDG is healthy to make light of an otherwise very heavy subject.

The ferciment technology, also known as ferro-cement construction, removes any weight that is not structurally essential to the design of the end product. For PDG the technology effectively reduces by 95% the weight of virtually any stone garden feature created when compared to solid stone. Unlike fiberglass which crudely attempts to mimic stone, because ferciment is merely re-distributed stone, the end product retains the character of natural stone.

In the past, such major garden features required the pricey services of both a landscape architect and a general contractor. The construction process was messy, disruptive and lengthy. PDGÂ?s designs eliminate all that by making it doable to have an Italian Renaissance waterfall fountain straight off the shelf.

The only preparation necessary now is a simple slab. A series of other designs including a folly resembling the ruins of an English abbey and a free form nonfigurative waterfall will debut within a few weeks. Waterfall designs can be viewed at parsonsdesigngroup.netfirms.com

The concept of reinforced concrete dates back to Roman times, but the building technique patented by a Frenchman titled Joseph Louis Lambot in 1855 was a revolutionary refinement of the process. Lambot was looking for an substitute to wood in the construction of boats. If reading the phrase Â?cement boatÂ? feels like a dyslexic moment, rest assured the concept is quite sound. In the last half of the 19th century an entire industry revolved around the process until ferciment was replaced by steel as the construction material of choice.

Lambot realized that when a predominantly Portland plaster is spread thinly over multiple layers of tightly woven mesh of wire or similar web like materials, the resulting surface has the same structural qualities as solid blocks of reinforced concrete poured as columns, beams, slabs or other planes.

LambotÂ?s experiment showed that the strength of the final product came not from the volume of concrete or the size of the reinforcement used but rather from the ratio of the cement to and the distribution of the reinforcement. Interestingly, Lambot wasnÂ?t necessarily looking to reduce the weight of the concrete since boats float by displacement regardless of weight. Rather he sought and succeeded in finding a more efficient and effective way to use a readily acquirable existing resource: Portland cement.

Although LambotÂ?s technology revolutionized the boat building industry it never prefabricated the transition to other industries such as the construction industry where it could have been place to even more effective use. The limited appreciation of the technology stems from both the widespread availability of relatively cheap cement and the favourite misconception that concrete requires volume to obtain strength. Cement manufactures supported to the cost saving technology with the same enthusiasm as todayÂ?s oil industry supports research in fuel economy.

The most important aspect of the ferciment process for PDG is flexibility in design. Ferciment means the capability to design and build with a strong and nearly indestructible material in a way that is otherwise not possible. Shedding the weight means that any design the mind can create is possible.

In addition to reducing the overall weight with the ferciment technology, the design team has adopted component engineering to distribute the remaining weight by dividing the design into sections that interlock to form the structure.

The substantial weight reduction means reasonable shipping costs and simple handling while interlocking construction means that installation can be accomplished in less than an hour by unskilled do it yourselfers and without the use of crane or heavy moving equipment.

The introduction of its Italian Renaissance waterfall has been so successful in the South Florida test market that the same designs are now acquirable nationally.

For further information contact Michael Dawsey at 1.772.344.5990 or at parsonsdesigngroup@lycos.com. Or visit the company website at parsonsdesigngroup.netfirms.com

###

©Copyright 1997-

, Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.
Vocus, PRWeb, and Publicity Wire are trademarks or registered trademarks of Vocus, Inc. or Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.

Find More Stone Slabs articles from search form.

Professional interior designers are expertly trained in the use of lighting features to create incredible results. In this four-part series which I call “Colour Me Brightly: Understanding Light in Interior Design,” I draw on my experience in London’s interior design community to explain this fascinating subject. This second article speaks about how to create patterns using illuminated materials.

Any perforated textile, when lit from the back or from the inside, will speckle adjacent forms with pattern, from point strips and pirouettes to constellations and dazzling laser specks. The professional interior designer can use the trim of a window covering to create mythologic banding crossways a shiny floor covering in the London summer. Some interior design firms love to use ornamental metal lanterns to paint fiery asteroids on walls and furniture, while light projected through a sculpted screen can create magnificent nonfigurative outlines in expressive contemporary interior design schemes. A factory-inspired metal stairwell with perforated treads – of the type often reinterpreted for ultra-modern interior design schemes – can throw little checkmarks of light onto local furniture when exposed to a bright London sky in springtime. A mythologic option with a wooden staircase would require the interior designer to specify a grit-washed tread, to deliberately throw stunning shadows from the rail onto the adjacent wall. Abstract wire-mesh sculptures by local London artists can engender powerful interior design emotions, with the pattern even becoming more important than the goal itself! Interior designers can expressively use appearance to distort the pattern from complete realism, when lit front-on, to Baconesque nonfigurative enchantment when illuminated at an acute angle. The same effect can be created by using mirrors to refocus natural light from bay windows in some of the more luxurious London residences.

Glass is another favourite tool for patterns. A frosted glass plateau can be lit from above with a halogen downlighter to cast intricate outlines of reflected light onto the ceiling, and the interior designer can even use positioning to cause refracted light to splash nonfigurative patterns onto the floor underneath the table. I have seen some London Interior Design consultancies deliberately illuminate trophy-style glassware on display shelves from the front so that the etching on the glass throws deep shadows that recapitulate a core design theme.

In the next (third) article in this series called “Colour Me Brightly!” I will reveal another secret of London’s interior design community: how to create patterns with opaque objects.

More Interior Design Articles

Grow Light Reflectors

Often neglected as to their importance, grow light reflectors play a major role in a good indoor hydroponic garden system. Light plays a great role or the most important role in photosynthesis. The use of grow light reflectors in your garden enhances light distribution and ensures uniform distribution. Discounts on calibre grow light reflectors are easily acquirable and a super cost effective way of improving your individualized garden productivity and efficiency. With effective planning, the use of the right lighting system together with grow light reflectors greatly expands your garden area.

Size and shape are important factors when considering the right grow light reflector. Grow lights and their configuration and individualized preference for the amount of light needed to grow your plants are taken into consideration. Horizontal placement of the lights and reflectors are effective ways of mounting this system. Garden size also determines what shape and size of grow light reflector to be used. Smaller grow light reflectors produce higher intensity light beams because of their shorter travel distance.

 Air-Cooled Reflectors

 For additional ventilation and heat control, air-cooled reflectors are used. Indispensable for those gardens cramped in small spaces because of the amount of heat generated by grow lights. It maybe difficult or close to impossible to maintain proper ventilation in such enclosed garden by the use of external fans. Usual setup for indoor hydroponic gardens includes grow lights with air-cooled reflective hoods covered by glass heat shields. This grants the light source to be put closer to the plant canopy ensuring superior light penetration. Gardens with no special cooling stipulations also gains to benefit from its installation. This is the saint setup of an indoor hydroponic garden system; investing a tiny more provides maximum garden performance and enjoyment for gardeners and hobbyists.

Interior design consultancies comprehend light in all its forms. In London, lighting is crucial to interior design consultancies that need to create stunning results. In this, the eighth and final article in my series which I call “DeLIGHTed by Design,” I continue to draw on my experience working with some of London’s Top Interior Design Consultancies to explain this exciting area.

When most schoolchildren are asked to think of the countryside, they often envision the hot, shimmering flicker of a bonfire on a crisp autumn evening or the comforting flare of a scented candle. But how is an interior design consultancy to re-interpret these fabulously realistic and atmospheric scenes for, say, an elegant central London flat? The answer is artificial light.

Interior design consultancies discern that artificial light is acquirable in many different shades. It is similar to the situation with paint, where buckets that are labeled “white” can actually contain a multitude of different tones. Interior design consultancies employ colour professionals who know that the cool white light of an energy-efficient bulb creates an entirely different effect from the warm yellow-orange tones of a tungsten filament. In London, low-voltage halogen options are often used in darker flats where there is a need to add light during the daytime. Interior design consultancies will install dimmer switches that grant homeowners to reduce the brightness of halogens at night, causing them to adopt a more husky yellow-red glow that is akin to an ancient lantern or oil lamp. By contrast, lamplight is too yellow for most interior design consultancies to include for daytime use, and indeed it can lead to sleepiness or lethargy at work (one of the reasons it is nearly never seen in London offices). But at night, tungsten lamps become much more warm and welcoming.

Some interior design consultancies have a love-hate relationship with fluorescent lighting options. These fixtures often emit various shades of white, ranging from a very cool, nearly daylight tone, which can be quite crisp, to a warm, rosy streetlight glow. Some interior design consultancies love fluorescent lights for London kitchens, where they illuminate workspaces but save on electricity bills. However, other interior design consultancies stay well away from fluorescent options because their colour does not change as they are dimmed. Fluorescents merely become less bright under such conditions, which can contribute to an unattractively dull, and nearly grey, lighting effect.

That brings me to the end of my series “DeLIGHTed by Design. ” Thank you for letting me share with you about how London interior design consultancies create mythologic lighting schemes!