Various products from Nora Quality Rubber Flooring Systems were specified for the entire flooring of a new healthcare clinic in Crailsheim, Germany.
The €54 million Klinikum Crailsheim was designed by LUDES Architekten – Ingenieure GmbH, Recklinghausen for developer Landkreis Schwäbisch-Hall. Seeking to strike a balance between providing a high quality healing environment for patients while meeting the cost and efficiency objectives of the organisation, the clinic features a clear design language and modern colour scheme to set new aesthetic standards, combining a friendly ambience with state-of-the-art medical engineering.
Focused from the very outset on energy efficiency and sustainability, the building planners extended their objectives to choice of building materials. When it came to the flooring, the developers had no hesitation – convinced by decades of good experience with their building stock – to specify rubber floorings from nora systems everywhere in the new clinic from the patient room to the OT.
Werner Horlacher, architect at the Schwäbisch-Hall district administration and project manager responsible for the new clinic building:
“Today, hospitals must shed their stereotypical image and start looking more like hotels. The recovery process is heavily influenced by the environment, so patients must feel like at home. We chose green as the predominant colour in the new building. This represents nature, recovery, health. The nora floorings in light green are the perfect complement to this cosy ambience, presenting a colour that is timeless and harmonious. One key point was also the sustainability of rubber floorings. It was only logical that we extended sustainability to the materials as well, so we built our hospital with passive house components. nora floor coverings are extremely long lived and ecological, and their environmental and health compatibility have been awarded the ‘Blue Angel’.”
Dipl-Ing. László Eifert, site manager at the LUDES architect’s office specialising in hospital architecture in Recklinghausen:
“The overriding property that floorings must have in hospitals is good cost efficiency during ongoing operations. The crucial factor behind our office’s decision was the durability and cleaning ease of nora rubber floorings. One further aspect constituted design solutions with a range of functions. We found it very important that the same nora flooring designs and surfaces exhibited many technical properties like electrostatic dissipation.”
Dipl.-Ing. Heinrich Lomb, technical manager at the Klinikum Crailsheim:
“A major role is assigned to the visual impression of floorings in a hospital; they are the institute’s calling card. The floorings must be durable and extremely easy to maintain if costs are to be minimised. This was also a reason behind our decision in favour of rubber floorings since they do not need coatings. For instance, access is then safeguarded at all times to all rooms and areas that would normally be out of bounds during coating operations, and downtimes are eliminated. We have already had over thirty years of experience with nora rubber floorings in our old building, so we’re only too pleased to have them installed in the new one as well.”
Anne-Leonie Blumer, state certified housekeeping manager of the Klinikum Crailsheim:
“The greatest challenge we encounter when cleaning hospital floors is the very short time slot available to maintain the institute’s level of cleanliness. Cleaning must be fast and efficient. We found nora floorings ideal: Very little work yields excellent cleaning results. The rubber floorings do not need a coating. For us, this means huge time savings and gentle basic cleaners. Our staff therefore do not have to handle aggressive agents, and there is less risk of allergies and respiratory disorders.”
Thomas Schaff, state certified clinical hygiene specialist for the Crailsheim and Schwäbisch-Hall clinics:
“I’ve been dealing with hospital floor coverings for over fifteen years now, and I must say that nothing touches the top quality of nora rubber floor coverings. It is very important that hospital floorings are resistant to disinfectants and other chemicals. Under the microscope, nora rubber floorings present the smoothest and tightest surface compared with other resilient floor coverings used in hospitals. Disinfectants can therefore be removed without residue even hours after surgery. Not only that, the rubber floorings can be disinfected easily over their whole surface. Yet another great advantage: nora floorings can be installed without joint seals, which can pose a hygienic problem when they collect dirt, swell, or crack with ageing. And because dirt cannot collect in the joins, there are considerably fewer bacteria on nora floorings.”
Nora products installed at the Klinikum Crailsheim included noraplan plus, plus ed and signa to cover a floor area totally measuring approximately 10,000 square metres.
