A glass balustrade can give defining character to an important public place, as in the case of the one designed by Smith Group JJR, Washington DC/USA, for the Genesis Cancer Care Center, Zanesville, OH/USA, and built by McGrory Glass, Inc., Paulsboro, NJ/USA. The structure accompanies the staircases and opens out at the top to delimit the landing that accesses the doctors’ offices. The glass used is Madras®, the glass with the widest range of textures and finishes for architecture and design produced by the Italian Vitrealspecchi. To obtain the desired effect the choice of model fell on Fili Maté double face, which is particularly suitable here because of its large pattern with long and narrow satin-finish bands resembling huge stylized blades of grass on a transparent background, on both sides of the balustrade. This creates an interesting play of superimpositions: dynamic, intriguing, visible from all angles and changing as the observer moves. Light, delicacy, design.
Madras® Fili Maté double face is the fruit of Vitrealspecchi’s experience in satin-finishing and chemical etching of flat glass, and a byword for all-Italian quality. Quality that’s common to all models in the Madras® collections in terms of style, production and also maintenance. The silky and compact texture is permanent, is not altered by use or exposure to sunlight and is more resistant to fingerprints than glass that’s apparently similar but produced by completely different processes, such as sandblasting and painting.
Madras® Fili Maté double face is available with the pattern parallel to either the short side of the plate (2,250 mm) or the long side (3,210 mm). It also comes in a non-double face version and also with a total satin-finish that blocks vision. It is suitable for a wide range of applications. Externally, thanks to its large size pattern which can also be seen from a long way off, it’s used for façades, perimeter openings (as in the church of Notre Dame de Bonsecours in Le Havre, France), balconies, shelters, balustrades, etc., and internally for partition walls, all-glass doors, shower cabins, etc. Interesting horizontal applications include tables and other all-glass work or display surfaces.
It is available on a monolithic float base to UNI EN 572 1-2, 2012 (temperable and laminatable) and also on float glass already laminated to UNI EN 12543: 2000.
In Europe it is supplied by a wide-reaching network of glass distributors and select glass processors.
In the USA it is distributed exclusively by McGrory Glass, Paulsboro NJ, a leading flat glass fabricator since 1984 and a consultant to the Architectural Glass industry in the USA.
