Everything Starts With Design — You Should, Too
“There is no such thing as a commodity product, just commodity thinking.” — David Townsend
Anthony DiNatale was born in South Boston. He entered the flooring business with his father in 1921 and began a career of craftsmanship and woodworking. In 1933, he founded DiNatale Flooring in Charlestown, working job to job, primarily in the northeast United States. In 1946, Walter Brown approached DiNatale and asked him to build a floor for a new basketball team to use. DiNatale quoted him $11,000 to complete the project, and the deal was struck.
DiNatale quickly went to work, knowing that he had to be cost-conscious to complete the construction, since he had bid aggressively to win the project. He gathered wood from a World War II army barracks and started building. He quickly noticed a problem: the wood scraps were too short for him to take his traditional approach to building a floor. So he began to create an alternating pattern, changing the direction of the wood pieces to fasten them together. He kept creating 5-foot panels, and when he had 247 of them, his work was completed.
Walter Brown was the owner of the Boston Celtics. When the Celtics moved into the Boston Garden in 1952, the floor commissioned by Brown in the year of their founding went with them. The floor was connected by 988 bolts and served as the playing surface for 16 NBA championships between 1957 and 1986.
DiNatale was a craftsman, an artist, a woodworker, but most prominently a designer. He made use of what he had and designed what would become the iconic playing surface in professional sports. The floor became a home-court advantage for the Celtics, as competitors complained about its dead spots and intricacies.
Design is enduring. Design is timeless. And, every once in a while, design becomes a major advantage.
Read the rest here.
Anthony DiNatale was born in South Boston. He entered the flooring business with his father in 1921 and began a career of craftsmanship and woodworking. In 1933, he founded DiNatale Flooring in Charlestown, working job to job, primarily in the northeast United States. In 1946, Walter Brown approached DiNatale and asked him to build a floor for a new basketball team to use. DiNatale quoted him $11,000 to complete the project, and the deal was struck.
DiNatale quickly went to work, knowing that he had to be cost-conscious to complete the construction, since he had bid aggressively to win the project. He gathered wood from a World War II army barracks and started building. He quickly noticed a problem: the wood scraps were too short for him to take his traditional approach to building a floor. So he began to create an alternating pattern, changing the direction of the wood pieces to fasten them together. He kept creating 5-foot panels, and when he had 247 of them, his work was completed.
Walter Brown was the owner of the Boston Celtics. When the Celtics moved into the Boston Garden in 1952, the floor commissioned by Brown in the year of their founding went with them. The floor was connected by 988 bolts and served as the playing surface for 16 NBA championships between 1957 and 1986.
DiNatale was a craftsman, an artist, a woodworker, but most prominently a designer. He made use of what he had and designed what would become the iconic playing surface in professional sports. The floor became a home-court advantage for the Celtics, as competitors complained about its dead spots and intricacies.
Design is enduring. Design is timeless. And, every once in a while, design becomes a major advantage.
Read the rest here.