Boardroom Curtains

2012 Has started off with such a bang. It is almost as if people know that the world will end in December so they are getting their house in order. Seriously, January has been our busiest month on record and I feel extremely lucky and a little overwhelmed. However It seems that this may just be the happy result of over 2 decades of work inventing new curtains and having an ernest desire to create magic with fabric.

One of our very interesting projects was this boardroom for a local development firm. The challenge was to create a system of curtains to encircle the room, 5 panels, with the ability to cover every wall. This normally wouldn't be such a challenge until you look up at the ceiling and you see 4 drop heights, an uneven ceiling, ducts, projection systems, lighting.. that ceiling is the busiest looking ceiling I have ever seen! And to make matters a little worse it's all concrete!

For this special task we selected a heavy duty hospital track which hangs off of suspension hangers from the ceiling. We spent over 6 hours installing this track splicing 5 pieces and getting it perfectly level! The curtains were huge, over 70 yards of cloth was needed to cover the walls. I selected a nylon film, laminated on one side with a water resistant micro coating. The cloth is remarkable, totally translucent up to 1 inch away, any further and it appears totally opaque! The fabric had to be light and very strong to withstand the rigours of daily use. We sewed these using another method from sailmaking. All seams were zig zagged and taped for strength, as light as this curtain is (the entire 70 yard mass weighs less than 10 lbs !) it is extremely strong and durable and best of all totally washable!

Not one to stop there we also redesigned the entire suspension system to function as a ripplefold. This was an undertaking unto itself. It was curtain magic at it's peak! Anyhow.... the photo above shows the open boardroom, below you see how effective this is when closed!

A detail of the curtain below...