Waterborne UV curing coating for a 5 stars hotel: sustainability and high performances

Overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem, the five-star David Citadel Hotel of Alrov Group, designed in 1998 by Moshe Safdie, the Israeli architect naturalized Canadian winner of the AIA Gold Medal award, is the south side of the Mamilla Quarter, in front of the historic Valley Hinome, according to a

horseshoe plan. The outer covering is made of a rough local limestone, while the interior is covered with wood walls and wood false ceilings.

All common areas, 385 guestrooms and suites have been redesigned and spread over 8 floors of the

building, according to a design by the Italian Lissoni Associati who, by keeping the use of traditional

materials and colours complemented by other alternative ones treated in an original way, designed

the environment as a maze enhanced by the study of natural and artificial light, rich in vegetation.

A rich palette of colours, lights, textured fabrics, parts made of brass treated with different finishes joined with glasses printed on the back, with a central idea connected to the use of wood, oak for the

floor, the heat-treated eucalyptus for the walls and the furniture in the common areas and suites,

characterize and personalize all the areas, both public and the private ones of the rooms.

«The mood of each room is characterised by the prevalence of some "colours" - tells us Alessandro Simonato, manager of the office design of the Tino Sana company located in Almenno S. Bartolomeo (in the province Bergamo) who has been commissioned to manufacture all the furniture - especially the eucalyptus heat-treated dark wood, iron or burnished brass, and the "Mondrian effect" obtained with surfaces made of brass treated  in different ways, mirrors, glasses printed on the back».

Belonging to an international luxury hotel chain with high quality and surface resistance requirements

suggested Tino Sana design office to choose carefully materials and finishes.

«In the rooms – goes on Simonato – we chose, instead of heat-treated eucalyptus wood, some veneered panels with pre-dyed wood coated with waterborne UV curing paints, for "coarse", visual effect so as to enhance the matt wood».

Thanks to the cooperation of Elia Maestroni, Key Account Manager of IVM Chemicals company and the technical support of the R&D laboratory, it has been developed a coating cycle that allows to reach a surface resistance comparable to other non-wood finishes, which is an essential feature for hotel furnishing of a hotel, of course, that is subjected to large mechanical stresses and to the use of detergents for cleaning.

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Wooden floors: natural unevenesses for a sustainable product

The presence on the market of materials

alternative to wood that reproduce its aesthetic

appearance  has changed the perception of the

consumer, which tends to ask for  floors with  large

sizes  or “herringbone” recovering the idea of

the floors "nailed down" of the past and with natural

appearance.

For durability and surface resistance requirements and

in order to make easier the maintenance, the market

actually includes almost only industrially treated

and coated floors that guarantee a stable quality.

Naturalness and old floors atmosphere: to meet these

trends, Tavar floors finish can be obtained also by

using dyed reagents, both traditional and waterborne.

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efficienza di trasferimento e ottima finitura

A long sustainability’s path

There are big Italian companies, known all

over the world that, without prejudices, did

something in –depth  and compared with the

territory that goes on over time despite the crisis

periods, the production changes, the normal difficulties

that are part of the “undertake”.

Since seventy years Snaidero, located in Majano, in the

province of Udine, manufactures kitchens by applying

its own tradition and experience in the technological

research and innovation. The company has moved from

the original idea to produce kitchens by using serial

concepts -are an inspiration the “American kitchens”- to

the current “smart kitchen” - the English

word “smart” includes different shades of the concept:

elegance and attractiveness, creative and reactive

intelligence - able to give intelligent solutions, really

flexible, very competitive in term of costs, at the same

time, with a high quality level; these latter features

typical of Made in Italy excellence, that can be seen in the

success of foreign market (essentially American but also

English, Turkish and of the Far East), which accounts for

50% of the annual turnover, complementary to the other

50 of national market. But the philosophy which is the

guiding principle for the company’s productive choices is

still the man, both as buyer and worker. The attention for

these areas took Snaidero 10 years ago to install a plant

able to coat with waterborne products and to choose for

a large part of production, low environmental impact

coatings (high solid UV, for example) and UV waterborne

finish. 

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Harps: artisanal historical masterpieces, waterborne coated by a cutting-edge plant

It is true that an instrument intended for high-level

professional performances, under the judgment of

an expert public, it must guarantee first of all that

the instrument has been built in order to avoid any

inappropriate sounds, but all the productive processes

we visited all even the less important, are so refined, to

understand what means a “Salvi harp”.

We ask Gabriele Dutto, manager of the company

together with we visited the company, if the coating

process of the instrument has only an aesthetic

function; he answered that: «the soundboard,

due to strings’tension- it can reach a carrying capacity

of 1200 kg-tends to deform, even if the parts needed to

built are stored in a well-ventilated and heated room

for about 4 months. For this reason coating in

addition to meet high aesthetic requirements, must be

elastic so that it absorbs the dimensional changes of

the instrument and will not “break” the film».

In brief: all the instrument components are prepared

in the joinery then they area pre-assembled creating

a “raw harp” (as we call it), whose validity is carefully

checked in order to guarantee the right functioning

(the assembly of the various components is so perfect,

that at the end it looks like a unique item).

All the components are then disassembled and coated,

to be next assembled again to built the “definite harp”, at

least in terms of structure, not yet tested in its primary

function, the sound production: the specialists of the

company (harp tuners and harpists), must do it later.

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Long lasting and high quality level powder coatings for a leader company in the “contract” furniture industry

«Each product must have a reason to exist.

This in the truth that emerges from the

selection of exemplary products which

represent best the success that Segis has realized».

This expression, quoted in Segis website, an Italian

company located in Poggibonsi in the province of Siena, a company leader in design and manufacturing

of innovative and high quality level seating for contract industry, describes exactly the company’s philosophy: to manufacture what can be useful to the market, paying attention to the

strictest International quality standard, looking for

the best materials, finishes and focusing the whole

productive process on a manufacturing in accordance

with the environmental sustainability principles.

Everything reflects Franco Dominici’s thoughts, creator

and founder of the company in 1983 and today in the

company together with his son Francesco.

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Tradition, high technology, quality and design in kitchen

THE IMPORTANCE OF FINISHES

Quality furniture requires an appropriate coating,

which meets at the same time, protection and aesthetic

needs, especially now when architects and designers

are increasingly directed towards the use of material

“as it is”.

«We need always more to use “natural effect” coatings

–tells us Nicola Stangherlin architect.

In particular for Minà collection, which includes

modern kitchens (island or wall), which remember the

industrial style ones (with for example many details

made of cast-iron); we needed finishes reproducing

the iron effect (corten, oxidation in its

different shades, zinc).

The coatings’ role is essential: they do not only

reproduce materials, but the effects too, in addition to

have aesthetic and protective functions».

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A material surface for the facade of the University of Hertfordshire’s Science Building

The Science Building, on the one hand, fully expresses its function through a maximum reduction of
the elements, while on the other, the choice of an ‘emotional’ coating, linked to materials that resonate with revisited local traditions, addressing the facade’s theme with suggestive implications. The building’s ‘skin’ - with the exclusion of the north wall - is composed of a double facade whose external part is composed of rectangular modules of drilled metal panels, which, in addition to acting as solar shades, create a ‘waved’ effect thanks to the disposition “open/close“ of the rectangular panels. The internal wrapper is a glass parallelepiped with exposed steel stringcourses.

The southwest corner marks the entrance, obtained by a hollowing out both the parallelepiped in bottom half as well as the top half, in which a symbolic tree will be placed.
The characteristic coating of the drilled metal panels is obtained with a special powder coating- Patina collection by Adapta Color, based in Pensicola, Spain, color Turquoise Cooper - accentuates the facades dynamic ‘wave’ effect which varies with the incidence of the light and the perspective of the observer. The bicolor effect obtained is very ‘material’ as it creatively reproduces oxidized copper.
The low environmental impact powder coating creates a suggestive effect, which would otherwise be difficult to achieve, except and at an extremely high cost, using copper, the inspired material.

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Organic or inorganic “Patina”?

In some areas of Southern Europe among architects is widespread a material launched in the 30s b y

the United States Steel Corporation, patented under the name Cor-Ten (originally, a low alloy steel with 0.2 -0.5 % copper, 0.5-1.5% chromium and 0.1-0.2% phosphorus).

Born as a material able to self-protect from electrochemical corrosion, it changed over the years, in order to obtain good structural properties (yield strength up to 580 MPa), both characteristics that

have convinced many designers to use it, for example, for bridges’ building, first in the United States, then in Europe.

Recently architects committed to civil building urban design and other decorative applications began to use the Cor-Ten steel (in the United States, the different types available in the market are called

weathering steels) both for the belief of using a high strength material and without maintenance, and for its aesthetic appearance, regarded as the result of a “natural” aging and thus inherently “real” or “true”, and not artificially produced or modified by man as some industrial processes for surface decoration. 

Unfortunately, some of these features are more the result of a well-designed communication rather than the result of the analysis of objective figures.

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