Beneath the Surface Blog

This week, the GPI Design team is working with fluted glass panels for a custom backsplash project (you can see the picture HERE). So we paid special attention to glass panel designs shared on Twitter. We are particularly pleased to see the following clear glass walls applied in these extraordinary buildings.  As always, enjoy and let us know your thoughts!

Panorama House Design: Glass Walls & Modern Interiors   "This breathtaking glass home, which was once a brick cottage, definitely has multiple WOW factors!" tweet via @DreamwallsGlass

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Vanke Triple V Gallery tweet via @ARCILOOK

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"Cube Court House by Shinichi Ogawa and Associates on@designmilk #design #architecture" tweet via @HRKzen

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Valentine's Day is coming up next week. This heart installation in the middle of Time Square tells it all. It's illuminated by transparent LED acrylic tubes.

"❤ Giant Beating Heart In New York City Celebrates Love ❤" tweet via @StoneSculptorJN

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On Valentine's Day, we are going to publish a video of a custom backlit onyx table that the GPI team just completed! It breaks our hearts that it's leaving the office soon.  Get excited and come back to Beneath the Surface next Tuesday!

TWeekly Archive is GPI Design's new blog column that updates every Friday to feature innovative and inspiring architecture, interior, and lighting designs that are shared through Twitter within the week. We always appreciate tweeps who constantly refresh our minds by sharing great articles, pictures, and videos. If you have something that you feel like sharing and want it featured on our blog, leave a link in the comment or simply @gpidesign on Twitter. We are always hungry for cool designs!

Check out this backlit graffiti wall that GPI provided for Marlite’s GlobalShop Booth! The wall is designed to mimic an urban alleyway, with continuous LED backlighting highlighting the vibrant graffiti graphics.  Graphics were spray painted on optical acrylic panels.  Custom controls animate the panels individually, reinforcing the concept that each panel is a brick in the wall.  The bold animation attracts visitors at the bustling tradeshow.

The Cienna Ultralounge in NYC- This project piqued our interest for several reasons – highly conceptual design, sophisticated use of colored LED lighting, and innovative materiality.

Designer Antonio Di Oronzo of Bluarch envisioned the ceiling as a cocoon-like element with soft, tactile, silky forms. To create this aesthetic, nearly 90,000 illuminated acrylic strands are suspended in amoeba-like shapes on the ceiling plane. The LED acrylic strands can shift in relation to the club music. One can imagine the sense of encapsulation is further enforced when the strands are slowly and mysteriously pulsing.

Given that RGB backlighting can sometimes get a bad rap –in this project, how were the various design elements executed to make the final result so successful?

Image Credit: BlueArch, FrameMag

Ouch. I feel like I’m backstabbing my trusted old friend, the natural stone panel. Lately we’ve seen a surge of interest in faux stone products, particularly for backlighting applications, and have found ourselves recommending these products for certain instances. There are some high-quality acrylics, poured resins, and co-polyester materials that have made advancements in the last five years and become promising contenders to the natural stone panel.

You’ve specified an exotic natural onyx, the client has fallen in love with it, and now after budgeting exercises, you need value alternatives that still come close to the original design intent.  The inherent beauty of onyx panels instantly makes them the focal points of space, so it’s not always wise to cut the budget in these areas. There ARE certain instances in which man-made faux stone panels will maintain your design intent, meet the budget, and please the client, but decisions should be made with discrimination.

When is a man-made onyx material a decent architectural solution? Here is our criteria for selectively determining when to use man-made faux stone panels versus the real thing:

1. Complex Geometries

Let’s face it – even with the most advanced processes, natural stone panels just doesn’t like to be coerced into complex geometries (particularly bent and curved shapes). Man made stone materials offer real flexibility in creating thermoformed and custom shapes. In addition, mitered edges are easier to fabricate and control quality.

2. Overhead applications

In terms of offering dramatic weight reduction, faux stone panels offer real benefit to designers and greatly reduce structural requirements. Plus if the stone will be viewed from a distance and out of reach from physical contact, it’s likely that the occupants will never know the difference.

3. Cost

Based on our experience, faux stone panels are typically about 50% less expensive than traditional glass-backed natural stone.  The lightweight nature will reduce the amount of structural steel necessary to support the faux stone in a feature wall or ceiling application.

4. Control/ Predictability

Especially when you’re in a time crunch and looking for a quick material solution to add to your specs, mother nature doesn’t always provide natural stone material in the exact way you have envisioned it, packaged neatly for insertion into architectural drawing sets. For optimal control and predictability, man-made materials offer the advantage.

5. Time

This piggy-backs onto #4 above.  With an easier specification process, man-made translucent stone panels greatly simplify the decision-making process. Existing product collections set clear parameters on available surface styles and options. While the manufacturing lead times for faux and natural stone panels are roughly the same, the sampling and specification process for acrylic or resin stone panels is usually quicker.

--> Now of course, there’s always a distinct set of parameters in which materials are best suited, and I must do justice to GPI's long history in the natural stone industry.  So stay tuned for when we explore the advantages of using natural stone panels (which, if nothing else, will ease my guilt for writing this blog post!).

Considering highlighting a countertop or reception desk with an illuminated white surface? At a recent project for a custom reception desk, smooth white Corian® surfaces were illuminated by GPI’s custom LED backlighting system. Providing an intriguing focal point, the luminous desk has clean lines and a sleek white appearance that was fitting for the space – a high-end architecture firm.

Here’s what we learned through the process of creating this LED backlit Corian reception desk:

1. Corian® Illumination Series Glacier Ice looks best in commercial spaces when illuminated with lighting temperatures in the cool range. (Pictured below with both our Cool White 5300K and Warm White 3500K LED panels.)

2. The Corian® Illumination Series surfaces have excellent light diffusion characteristics, making them ideal for backlighting applications when the appearance of bulb lines is not desired.

3. Given the thickness and light transmission characteristics of the Corian® surface, there is a delicate balance in the calibration of the lighting cavity to both maintain LED panel brightness and eliminate the appearance of hot spots. To maintain brightness by keeping the LED panels close to the illuminated Corian®, LED strings were buried in the casework to disguise bright lines.

4. Based on many factors, including size of LED panels and desk construction, we calibrated that our Infuse™ LED panels should be situated 1 ¼” away from the back of the Corian® panels.

5. Treatment of corners is especially important in maintaining even illumination – we coordinated closely with the millworkers to ensure that the panels were accurately sized to fit into the desk casework. Even a few millimeters of incorrect sizing and the desk would have gaps between the LED panels – resulting in distracting shadow lines.

Looking for an alternative to glass or stone for a translucent wall feature? If the application is suitable, you should consider using acrylic products. Not the paint, but rather sheet acrylic.

Acrylic is stronger, more scratch resistant, and lighter than glass. It comes in an almost infinite variety of colors and textures, and has stunning clarity- as good as or even better than glass. In fact, acrylic panels are typically half the weight of glass, and do not require bushings or gaskets when installing.  And although acrylic may be slightly more expensive initially, the durability, ease of installation, and longevity of acrylic may make it the cheaper in the long run.

So now that acrylic is your clear choice, what exactly is it? And what do all those industry terms mean?  Sheet acrylic is a form of plastic known as Polymethyl methacrylate, or PMMA.  Different brands of acrylic include Plexiglas, Gavrieli, Vitroflex, Limacryl, R-Cast, Acrylex, Acrylite, Acrylplast, Polycast, Oroglass, Optix, and Lucite.  But at the very basic manufacturing level, there are three main forms of sheet acrylic: extruded, continuous, and cell cast.

Extruded acrylic is mass-produced on giant rollers, and is usually produced in large volumes for commercial use.  Of the three types of acrylic extruded is the most budget friendly, but also the most susceptible to scratches and blemishes.

Continuous Cast acrylic is mass produced as well. Huge vats of acrylic monomer and other chemicals are poured on large steel belts, which carry the heated acrylic through a series of coolers. Continuous cast acrylic is slightly more expensive than extruded, though the quality is slightly better as well.

Cell Cast acrylic is the most expensive form of acrylic and the highest quality.  Molds, typically 4’x8’, are made, and acrylic is poured in.  This method allows for a number of different colors and textures to be produced, and produces acrylic with the best possible optical clarity

Which one is best for you?  If you’re looking for clarity, then cell cast acrylic has the best optical clarity as well as the greatest surface hardness.  However, cell cast acrylic tends to have greater variation in thickness.

Continuous cast acrylic is the material of choice for skylights, and is the next best for clarity. It is not as hard as cell cast materials, nor does it have as many color and thickness options. However, it is much cheaper and maintains uniform thickness as sheets.

Extruded acrylic is dubbed the “industry workhorse”.  It comes in a fair number of colors and sizes, and that combined with its low cost satisfies the needs of most acrylic applications. However, it is the softest of all acrylics, and is subject to expansion and shrinking over time.

It’s important to carefully consider your project before selecting which brand, and which type, or acrylic you wish to use.

For further reading, try:

http://www.modernplastics.com/polycast-cellcast-acrylic-sheet-papermask-p-1003.html