CONTINUUM

Natural Wood Floor Studio also is known as Natural Wood Floors & Design (Miami) won the prestigious 2016 Wood Floor of The Year Award - Best Limited Species, for this staircase in white Oak.

Naturally Stunning

Most wood flooring contractors would run away from a 15-inch plank wood floor on a slab in Miami, particularly when it involves custom treads and risers in a metal staircase that never actually touches the floor. Natural Wood Floors & Design (Miami) owner Fernando Avila says, "We are not like a regular wood floor company."

Hovering Staircase

This award-winning project in Miami Beach epitomizes that idea with a custom-fabricated staircase that hovers over the floor. The Natural team worked with the designers and architects, as well as the metal fabricators, as the design for the entire space was developed.

The room is so large that Avila recommended the ultra-wide flooring to suit the scale of the space. The client wanted to see no character in the floor and liked the color of European white oak. She also wanted it to be unfinished. "The client didn't want any finish—she wanted it to look very natural. So, we convinced them to use the Woca so it would have some protection," explains Natural Marketing and Sales Manager Lisa Poklop.

Best Limited SPecies

The fact that Natural Wood Floors just won its third Wood Floor of The Year trophy puts an exclamation point on that statement. Since the company's founding in 1989, Avila has encouraged local architects and designers to consider wood flooring an integral part of their designs from the conception of a project, and to push the boundaries of species, color, width or concept.

EUROPEAN WHITE OAK

Fabricating each individual step and riser for the hovering stairs was a particular challenge. "Making the treads out of different pieces and another piece for the riser—having that all match and meeting the expectations of the client who wanted to not see any grain—was challenging," Poklop says. Avila credits the experience of his team, most of whom have been at the company for more than 10 years, for succeeding with another unusual project. "The owners and the architects—everybody is extremely happy," Avila says. "I was really proud."