Trends and innovations
Glass trends and innovations
See What’s Possible™ and be inspired by glass innovation
Do you want your next renovation project to be inventive? The signage in your public square project to stand out? If glass isn’t at the top of your list of innovative building products, it probably should be.
Oversized glass
Glass allows us to connect to our environment while maintaining privacy and security. Add its ability to create different looks and improve performance levels, and its value grows still further. You can enhance those attributes when you select jumbo glass for your project. Oversized glass continues to gain momentum as a leading architectural glass trend, finding its way into almost any application.
Residential towers
Residential towers become more inviting when floor-to-ceiling views aren’t spoiled by shades or screens, because high-performance, jumbo glass helps block excessive solar heat and contributes to energy efficiency.
Retailers
Retailers can create bigger, more interesting displays because oversized glass doesn’t need heavy metal framing that breaks up visual continuity.
Museums
Museums can feature more treasures more ways using oversized, low-glare, high-performance glass to both highlight and protect the art inside, whether used on the exterior or interior.
New construction and renovations
New construction or renovations become innovative and inspirational when they replace opaque walls with oversized glass, or curved, tinted or unusually shaped oversized glass.
High-performance glass
Building performance codes are evolving rapidly in every part of the world, creating the need to retrofit with designs that also contribute to the structure’s energy performance. High-performance glass can help ensure your projects meet and exceed local, national and international requirements. As citizens, communities and companies increasingly value social responsibility, buildings that boast high-performance glass that exceeds current requirements have a clear advantage.
Digital signage and displays
Digital signage can be arresting and powerful and glass used here helps create a true interactive experience. It can reduce glare, enhances contrast and provides wide viewing angles that attract interest and draw the user in. Today’s touchscreens also reduce fingerprints, the “sparkle” effect, glass and haze to deliver a clean, engaged experience. As more displays move to 4K, digital signage glass becomes even more immersive. Concierge services, community alerts, local offers and more are just some of the communication options interior and exterior digital signage glass makes more inviting, interesting and gratifying.
Digital signage can be arresting and powerful and glass used here helps create a true interactive experience. Smart mirror displays also make your experience more personal while opening up spaces and offering more interior design options, whether it’s a television that converts to a mirror when power is off or interactive home gyms.
Renovation and retrofits
Although the juxtaposition of old and new might not be a recent trend, there is still value in making “old” buildings “new”. Renovation and retrofits opportunities around the world:
- Urban decentralization can be caused by population movement from the center to the periphery, or from a highly populated city to nearby smaller towns. In either scenario, the result can be a large inventory of vacant commercial and residential space in the urban center.
- High vacancies can slow new construction where aging buildings already dominate.
- Aging buildings can be made more energy efficient and soundproofed, changing them from “urban blight” to desirable “contributing citizens”.
Renovating and repurposing older buildings also offers some environmental benefits over the alternative of demolition and rebuilding. Improving the energy performance of existing buildings can save money and resources, create a more comfortable interior for occupants and at the same time reduce the building’s environmental emissions. Glass retrofits, particularly, can play a significant role.
A high proportion of energy loss, solar discomfort and lack of sound insulation in older buildings occurs because of the original fenestration. Now with such a wide array of aesthetic options and as many levels of solar performance and light transmission, glass renovation will have an immediate impact on the building value.
Home and interior design
Glass for interior design in the home has moved on from only elegant mirrors, bright backsplashes, and modern showers. It can now also go to work in the home office, with a translucent glass partition that hides your cluttered desk from the rest of the room, or a glass wall or door that allows you to work in silence but keep an eye on the kids. The addition of interior glass can introduce daylight and help retain views in new spaces and repurposed rooms.
And glass in commercial interior spaces can provide solutions for any environment without sacrificing natural light:
Translucent panels
Translucent panels in medical examination rooms offer easy-to-clean surfaces and the comfort of daylight while maintaining privacy.
Glass wall
A glass wall of a conference room can double as a vast whiteboard for brainstorming.
Glass desks and tabletops
Glass desks and tabletops bring a contemporary feel to a repurposed, brick-and-wood space.
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