Snapshots

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Designers stretch imagination with channel glass 
“A major focus for [Technical Glass Products] is working with architects and designers to provide glazing solutions that meet their unique design challenges and expand their design options. … The Imagination Cube competition is a great way to inspire innovative designs.” 
— Jeff Razwick, director of business development for TGP

The basics: In the 2007 Imagination Cube competition, hosted by the Construction Specifications Institute Phoenix Chapter and the American Institute of Architects Arizona Chapter, student and professional architects were asked to push the functional, technical, spatial or artistic boundaries of Pilkington Profilit channel glass in a structure that would fit into a 48-foot cubic space. The winning entry, entitled “The Art of Place Making,” used channel glass as a public sculpture. The design entries are not built but are presented digitally.     

The players: Contest hosts, CSI Phoenix Chapter, AIA Arizona Chapter, Phoenix; Winning design architect, DMJM, Phoenix; glass supplier, Technical Glass Products, Kirkland, Wash.        

The glass and systems: Pilkington Profilit channel glass in an extruded metal perimeter frame.
 

Spherical Trajectory at Ohio State University
Visitors to the sports fields outside the new Larkin Hall at Ohio State University, Columbus, walk past a glass and stainless steel art installation that moves and shifts in the wind and sun. The Ohio Percent for Art Program commissioned the installation, Spherical Trajectory, that designer Bill Buchen compares to “aerial ballet” and “synchronized gymnastics.” 

“The work comprises silver arcs and prismatic discs [that] rotate, shift and tilt in the wind,” says Buchen, who designed the project with wife Mary Buchen. The two head up New York City’s Sonic Architecture. 

The 40 inches in diameter, 5¼16-inch thick laminated glass discs feature a holographic interlayer that produces changing colors. Jokimo, Newport Beach, Calif., fabricated the glass. 

“The glass turns from red to gold to green through the color spectrum as people walk by the sculpture or the sculpture turns in the wind. We want them to experience environmental phenomena [of] sun and wind as the sculptures change colors and vane in the wind,” Buchen says. 

Eastern Sheet Metal, Cincinnati, fabricated the stainless steel for the project. Wanner Metalworx, Delaware, Ohio, installed the project.  Michael Hayden, designer for Thinking Lightly Inc., Santa Rosa, Calif., coordinated the glass order on the job. 

The glass cost about $10,000, and the project took about a year to complete. 

Sonic Architecture completed two other installations for Larkin Hall, including (M)Body, a series of eight cast benches, and the Celebration Drum Circle. 
 

Schomburg Center for Research  in Black Culture
In May 2007, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture for the New York Public Library in Harlem completed its $11 million renovation. The 16,000-square-foot renovation included a glass façade with a video wall.

“The renovation of the [Schomburg Center] features a prominent new entrance and a new glass façade with a video wall that is viewable at night from Malcolm X Boulevard,” says Joseph Coppola, principal in charge of the project at Dattner Architects, New York. “The entrance is topped by a stainless steel canopy that projects from mirrored, textured laminated glass that gives the glass depth and ever-changing unique reflections. ‘The New York Public Library’ is silkscreened on the laminated glass interlayer above and below the canopy.” 

The glass façade consists of a custom curtain wall with 3¼4-inch projecting stainless steel mullion exposure, structurally glazed support, low-E insulating glass and silkscreened glass edges. “The silkscreened glass edges enhance the glass appearance and diminish the visibility of the stainless steel mullions behind it,” Coppola says. 

Dow Corning, Midland, Mich., supplied the structural sealant. Depp Glass, Long Island City, N.Y., and JE Berkowitz L.P., Pedricktown, N.J., fabricated the glass. 

D & D Architectural Products Inc., Bellwood, Ill., fabricated the curtain wall, and Industrial Window Corp., Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., was the glazing contractor. Beys Contracting, Brooklyn, N.Y., was the general contractor.

Dattner Architects started work on the design in August 2003.