International Wood International Wood 2008 | Page 62

be more striking. The lobby was to be real
rich and warm, with a beautiful stone floor
and ornate columns leading to a very warm
wall in the reception space. They agreed.”
In a project of this size, these kinds of
changes happen pretty regularly, Ghent says.
“When you are using a lot of wood or
stone you go to where it’s being quarried, or
cut, and you check its quality. Because of the
size of the bubinga logs, we probably looked
through forty or fifty thousand feet of veneer.
As the log is cut, you could see how the grain
changes. We picked a certain section of the
log because it had this beautiful character,
and once we marked it, it was done.”
Ribboned sapele surrounds waterfall bubinga
throughout Gaylord National’s reception lobby.
WOODS WORKING WELL TOGETHER
“This cut [bubinga] has a texture that actually does fit its
name, ‘waterfall.’ You see this beautiful red-purple ribbon
running through it that looks like a waterfall, and when you
stain it, it really brings out the color.”
Donald J. Ghent, Jr., AIA,Architect for Gensler
“And it continues the story of the im-
portance of water in the project. When we
showed the client the stained samples, and
told them it was called waterfall bubinga,
they all thought I was kidding. They thought
I made up the name.”
Ghent presented samples of the