How is glass being used as an interiors feature?
This month Design Insider has had a material focus on Glass. You may have already read about Jordan Söderberg Mills and his use of glass in art and the stunning Monster cabaret, a show which features beasts and fantastical creatures, all made from glass! Now we speak to PENSON, GX Glass, Neil Tomlinson Architects and Future Glass to learn how glass can be an interiors feature.
PENSON: At PENSON we love using stunning multi-use materials in our interior schemes. Thanks to exciting recycled glass initiatives, we have been installing this material in the majority of our schemes. Recycled glass offers another dimension to the interiors we invent whilst doing amazing things for the environment. Our sculpted reception desks look layered with a beautifully mottled finish – sometimes in colours straight from the bottles they’ve been recycled from.
For our soon-to- be-completed project at JO&JOE Gentilly, Paris, the central bar will be circular with an inner cylindrical floor to ceiling clear glass tube. Evolving neon coloured artwork will be projected above, and the tube will shelve bottles below. A removable metallic tinted film will be placed on the glass, enabling the piece to be adapted and changed in future. For PENSON, this installation symbolises the creativity of the JO&JOE brand and marries functionality with design. JO&JOE Gentilly is set to open later in 2018 and will be the first low carbon BBCA labelled hotel.
Joanna Lush, GX Glass: The scope for using ceramic printed glass is huge – the longevity and robustness of glass can be combined with an image to provide an eye-catching and cost effective alternative ‘faux’ marble or granite – or even more exotic textures for splashbacks and feature walls.
Gx Glass collaborated with leading architects Cousins and cousins to create a murano glass inspired pavilion for the centrepiece of Clerkenwell Design Week 2015, giving visitors the opportunity to walk through a beautiful glass structure.
‘Glaze’ was constructed of multi-coloured glass panels made from our Gx Design Range of products – back painted, laminated and and ceramic printed glass; fully demountable and designed to be reusable, the installation celebrated the versatility of interior glass, the wide range of colours available and the scope of surface designs that makes glass an important medium through which designers and architects can realise their ideas.
Neil Tomlinson, Neil Tomlinson Architects: Using glass for interior walls and divisions or for floors and ceilings effectively renders them invisible, flooding an interior with extra light and encouraging views though into other spaces. When carefully controlled and layered, glass also adds complexity, encouraging reflection and obscuring dimensions, so as not to reveal an interior’s secrets too quickly.
Glass can be used innovatively as a transparent structural element, removing the dominance of necessary elements or allowing them to float or hang seemingly unsupported, as with these ‘hanging stairs’ on a project in London’s Morton Mews.
Gareth Phillips, Future Glass: Use glass as the connection between mixed materials for a themed surface finish whilst lifting the details and adding depth to the thinner substrate material beneath. Futureglass is excitedly developing this process to offer designers opportunities to link details of mixed materials under a common durable glossy finish.
We apply a printed laminate to the bottom surface of toughened glass. This helps to accentuate the details and qualities present in the material whilst also adding depth to the thinner substrate material.
How have you used class in your interior designs? We would love to know more ways in which glass is being used in contract sector interiors, please leave a comment in the section below or tweet us @DesignInsider 1