TerraMai goes Hollywood

Hollywood is learning to love green and its always loved beauty – which makes TerraMai a perfect match. TerraMai provided the wall paneling material for the “Green Room” project at this year’s Emmy Awards, held Sunday, September 16 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. 

The project is sponsored by Architectural Digest magazine and designed by LA and Paris-based designer Timothy Corrigan. Corrigan took advantage of this high-profile project to prove a point. “I wanted to show that being green doesn't have to be Birkenstocks,” he said. “We call it ‘Eco Luxury.’”

To demonstrate that green design can be ultra-refined, even by the most traditional and conservative standards, he chose as his inspiration a classic, wood-paneled English drawing room. To pull off this look, Corrigan needed the finest wood available but it also had to be eco-friendly. TerraMai fit the bill on both counts.

The clear, vertical-grain (CVG), old-growth Douglas fir used for the paneling is the finest quality fir available anywhere. The material was reclaimed from old bleacher seats taken from Huntington Beach High School in Hunting Beach, CA. The quality of this CVG fir – in widths up to 13” wide and lengths up to 20’ long – exceeds anything available new.

It’s a tribute both to Corrigan’s skills and the evolution of green design products that he was able to achieve the look and feel he wanted without comprise.

Corrigan’s Green Room “demonstrates how compatible elegance and environmentally-sound design can be,” said Giulio Capua, vice president and publisher of Architectural Digest, “so elegant that one would never expect it was designed with the environment in mind.”

As Corrigan successfully illustrates, reclaimed wood is about much more than simply rustic barn siding or ‘Birkenstocks’ (hey, don’t get us wrong, we love Birkenstocks). It can be sophisticated and refined enough for even the most luxurious, high-end applications – whatever the aesthetic. Just check out the 2007 Emmy Awards Green Room.