Case Study: Printed Floor, Backdrop and Ceiling Tiles

We worked with blackwalnut llc to specify and build printed flooring, ceiling and backdrop tiles for the NBC Sports Winter Olympics studio. Concept and design planning begin years in advance of the Olympic games. In fact, the Olympic studio’s graphically intense scenic elements resulted from months of brainstorming and product sampling. NBC Sports and blackwalnut selected Rose Brand printed “Impact” floor for the Winter games’ studio because it installed much more quickly and provided greater flexibility than the tiles used in prior years. The flexibility enabled blackwalnut to quickly adjust their design on-site in order to create the jagged rock reveals in the fabricated deck.

The ceiling panels that filled in the deconstructed Geodesic dome shape were more challenging. The limited load bearing capacity of the studio infrastructure and the geometry of the 7th Order dome required a substrate with special features. It needed to be oversized yet lightweight, and it needed to look fantastic when printed, seamed and front lit by the LEDs embedded in the dome’s frame. We recommended gatorboard for the geometric ceiling tiles and SAV for the marbled backdrop pieces. As our client at blackwalnut said, “The results speak for themselves.”