Watershed Project

Custom Tile Mosaic Artwork Depicts Wetland Habitat

David Aichinger Tile Company was commissioned by the Ramsey Washington Metro Watershed District (Little Canada, Minnesota) to design and create this tile mosaic in their main reception area. The newly constructed building comprised mostly of green materials in order to leave the smallest environmental footprint. The Watershed District wanted the mosaic to feature the wetland environments that they work tirelessly to preserve and protect.

The design phase of the project began with an initial consultation focused on the mosaics content. A Watershed District employee assisted in selecting botanical species native to the wetland and lakes the Watershed protects. We ultimately chose to use the Great Blue Heron as the focal point of the mosaic. The Blue Heron can commonly be found throughout shorelines and marsh areas in the Twin Cities and surrounding metropolitan area.

One of biggest challenges during this project was selecting the tile, stone and color scheme. We knew that it would take the right colors and stone to accurately portray plant and animal life depicted in the complex mosaic. After choosing the stone the drawn design was scaled, printed and made in to a template to guide the mosaics creation. Each large piece of tile was cut by hand in our studio and painstakingly numbered for transport to the installation site. This was an enormous task as the Heron alone had over 75 pieces of hand cut stone designed to portray the birds feathers.

Next hundreds of tile pieces were carefully transported to the Watershed Building and installed on the front of the reception desk. Then came the meticulous task of setting 1”x1” mosaic tiles that represented the background of the wetland scene. One of our favorite parts of the design is how the foreground appears to jump out of the background. This was accomplished by using thicker stone or tile for the plants and Heron than the relatively thin mosaic tiles.

The last phase of this project was the blue glass tiles inlaid in the stained concrete floor. The glass tile appears like a ripple of water from the rain garden in front of the building. The tile also serves as a path from the main entry area into the offices. In order for the top of the glass tile to be flush with the concrete floor we had the concrete within the arch ground down ¾ of an inch. We then poured self-leveling cement in the arch so it had a nice and flat surface to lay the glass onto at the exact depth. This maintained a perfect match of the floor height between the concrete and tile.

Lastly, To keep the arch in a flawless line, we cut the sheets of glass tile into single rows and set them one row at a time. Perhaps the greatest reward of this project is the knowledge that every visitor who enters the watershed building is immediately greeted by our project. To this date it is still one of the most complex and rewarding projects completed by the David Aichinger Tile Company.

For more images of the Watershed project visit the "Artwork" portion of our project gallery page.