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Why jumbo glass continues to grow in popularity in commercial designs and how frameless impact jumbo glass has entered the hurricane market.
When you think of some of the world’s most renowned buildings, they most likely involve large expanses of architectural glass. Architectural glass can provide several benefits, including increased aesthetics and energy efficiency. In addition, studies have proven that the natural daylight that enters a building offers many health benefits and improves your overall mood. Using jumbo glass is a popular design trend that continues to grow in popularity and projects throughout the country. Most impressively, jumbo glass is making its way into the hurricane market, notorious for its limited glass sizes due to the strict impact-resistant test standards that govern it.
So what is Jumbo Glass?
Jumbo glass is all around us; you see extensive use of glass or windows in every major city and beyond. As fabricators continue to expand their capabilities in taking jumbo flat glass and fabricating insulated units, coatings, and tints, it offers new and exciting design option to architects and owners. Jumbo glass typically ranges from widths of 84” to 130” and heights from 144” to 300”, which demands massive production equipment. Recent advances in glass manufacturing and superior coatings have made it possible to produce large sheets of glass with added performance benefits and a wide range of aesthetic options.
Here are six design trends with jumbo glass.
1.Pushing the Limits
The demand for glass is not only increasing in quantity but also size. Over the last decade, there has been an increased desire for more glass, bigger glass, and more transparent glass. Jumbo glass allows architects to energize and illuminate interiors with natural light and impress at first sight with larger-than-life designs.
2.Minimizing Visual Barriers
Due to the greater presence of oversized glass, the material has become essential to a building’s aesthetic success. This trend calls for larger panes of glass while minimizing the impacts of framing. Therefore, designers and engineers strive to create spaces without visual interruption. People are drawn to a smaller visible glass to frame ratio, which allows for clear and unobstructed views.
3.Natural Lighting
One of the most significant values of jumbo glass is how people respond to a maximized presence of light and interaction with the outdoors. Building owners and developers continue to look for bigger, unobstructed views with better daylighting and energy efficiency. An oversized floor-to-ceiling window façade can help create a clean, open, and contemporary space. Jumbo glass allows you to redefine design possibilities by dissolving the boundaries of connection between the indoors and outdoors.
4.Energy Efficiency
Glass is a sustainable, fully recyclable material that provides excellent environmental benefits, such as contributing to mitigating climate change and saving precious natural resources. In many of its architectural applications, glass can help save energy and cut costs. This is especially evident in insulating glass for windows and facades. Glass is also used to generate renewable energy through solar-thermal and photovoltaic applications.
5. The Cool Factor
Let’s face it, big glass is just cool! Huge glass walls and structures can create the ultimate contemporary, sophisticated architectural look, be it residential or commercial applications. You don’t have to look any further than a handful of Apple stores around the world to see what jumbo glass can do. The brand that defines cool has some of the most iconic glass structures and entrances for its stores. Large, oversize glass in architectural applications has become synonymous with ultra-modern, contemporary designs.
6. Jumbo Glass Enters the Hurricane Market
Although jumbo glass is no stranger to the U.S. architectural market, it is a reasonably new entry in the hurricane market or regions that require impact-resistance standards such as Florida. Typically these large oversized glazing units have become popular in commercial storefront or curtain wall applications. However, to achieve these expansive systems, the metal framing can be pretty significant. This all started to change when SLIMPACT® entered the hurricane market in 2015, a frameless impact glazing solution that eliminated metal framing. What’s more exciting is the recent introduction of SLIMPACT® JUMBO, offering designers and owners a frameless impact system that has a width of 10’ and a height of 20’ that can be continuous without a vertical frame, creating an endless width and incredible all-glass wall option. The days of the 5’ x 6’ bulky impact windows are far behind us, and the future is undoubtedly bright for jumbo glass and oversized impact glazing systems.
For more information on SLIMPACT® visit www.slimpact.com.
