— A 2012 Bathroom Blogfest Article —
Mention “tile in the bathroom,” and many people probably conjure images of residential installations. Who doesn’t love the upgrade of beautiful porcelain or glass tile for her home’s shower and bath areas, on the floors or walls? However, we at Crossville see “tile in the bathroom” in split screen. Our porcelain and glass tile products are equally suited for home and commercial use.
As a matter of fact, when we signed on as a participant in the 2012 “Bathroom Blogfest,”an annual online event that invites industry pros to blog, tweet and post on the topic of bathroom design, we knew it’d be a great opportunity to remind people that bathrooms are as important within commercial facilities as they are in our homes. This year’s Bathroom Blogfest theme, “Still Climbing Out: Bathroom Design After Cancer,”puts a focus on the need for universally accessible bathrooms for people in all ages and stages of life. Certainly, tile can be a wonderful contribution to bathroom design that’s as functional as it is beautiful.
For example, Crossville recently partnered with Cannon Design of Chicago to create the world’s first cradle-to-cradle tile installation project for the restroom renovations in the 43-story John C. Kluczynski Federal Building in downtown Chicago. The bathrooms in this iconic building had not been updated since the early 1970s, so they were long overdue for aesthetic upgrades; the existing facilities were woefully dated. Yet most importantly, they needed overhauling with efficient, green fixtures and materials and fresh universal design to make accommodation for all employees and visitors to the building.
BEFORE: The bathrooms of the Chicago Federal Building were last updated in 1974. The look, layout and materials needed major upgrades.
Cannon called on us to use our unique capability to recycle fired porcelain to harvest all existing tile, toilets and other fixtures from the building to create the feedstock for the new tile for the renovations. All told, we took back 200,000+ pounds of porcelain to create 57,000 square feet of new tile specially designed for the project. Yes, we made sophisticated new tile for floors and walls out of crushed toilets, sinks and urinals (post-consumer, no less)! It was quite a feat but well worth the effort.
200,000+ lbs of tile and fixtures were harvested in stages from the JCK Building, shipped to Crossville’s Tennessee plants and recycled to make new tile.
Our cradle-to-cradle tile blended wonderfully with Cannon’s sleek reinvention of the facilities. The new bathrooms certainly did “climb out” (to reference our Bathroom Blogfest theme) of the past to become sustainable, accessible and beautiful facilities that are accommodating and aesthetically pleasing.
The Federal Building bathrooms AFTER renovation are modern, open—and accessible to people in all ages and stages of life.
The transformation of the restrooms in the JCK Federal Building is striking, with Crossville’s specially designed and manufactured tile on floors and walls.
Thanks to the challenges and accomplishments of this unique project, Crossville established a partnership with TOTO USA to recycle that company’s fired, pre-consumer toilets that would otherwise be sent to landfills. We’ve recycled well over 7 million pounds of TOTO’s fired porcelain since this partnership began, and all told, thanks to our ability to recycle fired porcelain, we’ve recycled more than 11.2 million total pounds from all our reclamation efforts.
As both residential and commercial designers and architects grow in their commitments to sustainable, accessible bathroom design, our products will find their places in more and more beautiful spaces we want to sink into…rather than climb out of!
ABOUT BATHROOM BLOGFEST
“Still Climbing Out” is the theme of the 7th annual blogfest, which brings together bloggers from around the globe to write about the importance of bathrooms in the customer experience. Their posts come from a wide range of perspectives that include sociology, marketing, research, psychology, environmental, customer experience, and design.
Bathroom Blogfest was founded by Christine B. [C.B.] Whittemore, hief simplifier of Simple Marketing Now LLC.
Here is a full list of this year’s participants.
Follow Bathroom Blogfest.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/bathroomblogfes Website: http://www.bathroomblogfest.com/
I didn’t know about your ability to recycle tile. What a great story, thank you for sharing.
Excellent post and impressive story about recycling tile. Excellent example of how tile is not just getting better.; It’s also getting better for the environment. Thanks for sharing. Kudos to Crossville.
I’m so pleased you shared this story! I heard it first in February 2012 and had my fingers crossed you might tell it just for Bathroom Blogfest! Thank you, Irene!
Best,
CB