Interior decorative glass curtainwall complements existing architecture
PITTSBURGH, Aug. 17, 2017 – Chicago O’Hare Airport’s Terminal 5 was designed more than 20 years ago, so when it recently underwent a renovation and expansion, architects specified Starphire Ultra-Clear® glass by Vitro Architectural Glass to enhance the original building’s existing architecture and continue it through the mezzanine renovation and expansion.
Designed by Epstein Global and commissioned by the Westfield Group, a two-story interior curtainwall serves as a partition separating secured and non-secured areas of the airport terminal. Starphire glass panels fabricated by Goldray Industries, line up against one another and create a continuous image that shows the gradual changes in color and texture that can be seen when heading inland from Lake Michigan to Chicago and on to Illinois’ rural cornfields. The panels were created with Dip-Tech digital printing technology, which uses a flat-bed printer to print high-resolution images on glass.
The panels depict lakes, shallow shores, city buildings and farmland in a collage of rectangles and squares. The art was inspired by NASA satellite imagery. Transparent rectangles filter natural light from windows and skylights without diminishing the curtainwall’s privacy function.
“Starphire glass has less of a green tinge when compared with clear glass,” said Roxanne Laverty, Goldray marketing coordinator. “To ensure the best quality of colors on the digitally printed image, Starphireglass was the obvious choice.”
Introduced in 1990, Starphire Ultra-Clear glass remains the clearest, most transparent commercial float glass available today, with visible light transmittance (VLT) of 91 percent in a standard ¼ inch (6 millimeter) thickness. To learn more about Starphire glass, visit www.vitroglazings.com or call 1-855-VTRO-GLS (887-6457).
About Vitro Architectural Glass
Vitro Architectural Glass, part of Vitro, S.A.B. de C.V. (BMV:VITROA), is a new organization created from Vitro’s acquisition of PPG’s flat glass business unit. Now the largest company of its kind in the Americas, Vitro Architectural Glass manufactures industry-leading brands such as Solarban®, Sungate® and Starphire Ultra-Clear® glasses at U.S. plants in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; Fresno, California; Salem, Oregon; and Wichita Falls, Texas. The company also operates one of the world’s largest glass research and development facilities in Pittsburgh and four residential glass fabrication plants in Canada. For more information, please visit www.vitroglazings.com.
Solarban, Sungate, Starphire and Starphire Ultra-Clear are registered trademarks owned by Vitro.
The PPG Logo is a registered trademark of PPG Industries Ohio, Inc.
