Huntsman Hall Will Floor You After We Floor it

By Ken Snyder

Today I’m going to fill you in on the ground floor. (This is different than getting you in on the ground floor.)

Actually, I’ll do better than that because I’m going to fill you in on all the flooring in Huntsman Hall.

Deciding what kind of floor to put in a new building is more than just a detail. You could have the nicest building on the block but if the floors are worn, scuffed and breaking up it’s going to prematurely age your fancy facility.

That’s why much of the flooring in the new building will be made of terrazzo. Have you ever heard of terrazzo? It sounds like the name of a faraway planet, doesn’t it. It’s not like granite that you can chip off a boulder, it’s a composite made up of marble, quartz, granite and glass.

If you’ve got a building that’s going to get a lot of traffic and you want a floor in that facility that lasts a very long time, terrazzo is what you should get. It’s what they often use in airports.

The floor in this artist rendering of Huntsman Hall is terrazo.

It’s not a new flooring which is why we know it lasts so long and how we know that it is easy to maintain. The main floor of the George S. Eccles Business Building is terrazzo and it’s the original flooring that was there when the building first opened 44 years ago. When you walk the halls of the main floor of our business building you are cruising the same floors that Dean Douglas D. Anderson walked on in the 1970s when he was a student here. Some people probably practiced their disco spin moves on that very floor. (You probably don’t know what a disco spin move is, do you? That’s how old the floors are.)

The terrazzo we will be using in Huntsman Hall will be a different color than what is in the business building but it will be the same kind of flooring. In Huntsman Hall the stairwells will be terrazzo, the main areas of the ground floor, the hallways on the second floor, the food court, and other parts of the building will feature terrazzo. 

Ken Snyder

We will have carpet in the wing that will host our centers, in the dean’s office area and in all of our classrooms. Much of the first floor or the basement floor will feature a kind of porcelain that looks like stone. There will even be some areas with wood flooring.

We are going for the “wow factor” and choosing the right kind of flooring is a foundational part of capturing that impressive and professional look our new building must have. So when the building opens and you have taken in everything else, take a few minutes to get grounded and look at the floor beneath your feet. Then you can boast that you have stood on terrazzo and discovered the “wow” factor.