Architectural glass is an increasingly popular material choice for public spaces, thanks to the functional and aesthetic possibilities it provides. It’s easy to clean and maintain and can help meet a project’s sustainability goals. Plus, it can be used to create a wide range of light settings and a design statement as bold or as subtle as a designer or architect chooses.
Cast and laminated glass are two types of glass most often used for high-impact design applications. Highly versatile, they give designers and architects countless ways to realize project visions and goals.
With sculptural patterns and textures, cast glass offers tactile and dimensional appeal. Its light-altering surfaces play with shadows and light, creating visual interest and customizable levels of privacy. Cast glass brings a handcrafted feel to today’s technology-heavy settings.
Comprised of one or more decorative interlayers laminated between lites of glass, laminated glass is extremely adaptable and offers endless design possibilities. Depending on the glass supplier, interlayer visuals can range from solid colors to vibrant graphics to highly personalized photography and more.
A new collection from Forms+Surfaces is pushing the boundaries even further by uniting the best of both worlds. The innovative BermanGlass Levels Kiln Cast Glass combines artistic cast glass designs and sophisticated glass lamination technologies to create a dynamic line of glass with a new level of creative potential.
Levels glass is kiln cast glass laminated with colour, graphic or image interlayers. Each design pairs an artisanal texture, cast on a handcrafted mold and fired in a kiln, with an interlayer optimized specifically for that texture.
The sculpted surfaces of each design capture light on and through the glass; the interlayers increase the sensation of depth and dimension and accentuate ever-shifting plays of light, texture, colour and motion.
Each Levels design is a combination of glass texture, plus a laminated interlayer:
- Textures shape the surface appearance of the glass. Imparting an artistic, handcrafted feel, each has distinctive visual characteristics, tactile qualities and ways of reflecting or refracting light. The glass itself is inherently clear.
- Interlayers add colour and enrich the optical experience of each design. Three types of interlayers produce varied visual effects: colour interlayers feature solid colour and offer the most subtle end results; graphic interlayers expand the design complexity by introducing graphics in a single colour; and image interlayers incorporate multiple continuous tone colours and have the most dramatic impact.
The Levels collection launches with 12 standard designs. Three textures — Corduroy, Hikaru and Nuv’eau — are each available with a choice of four different interlayers optimized specifically for that texture. Viewed up close or at a distance, in static or mobile situations, and as light and viewing angles change, Levels designs offer a dynamic, captivating look.
BermanGlass Levels Kiln Cast Glass is available exclusively in Forms+Surfaces’ LEVELe Wall Cladding and Column Systems, LEVELe Elevator Interiors, and LightPlane Panels. Each system is designed to address the mechanical details — like trim pieces, attachment systems and mounting assemblies — so designers don’t have to worry about resolving these aspects.
This content was published by Azure on behalf of Forms+Surfaces.