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Trends and innovations

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Design with glass

From anti-reflection to color tints, modern glass enhances design in many ways.

Build with glass

Whatever the construction challenge, we have the glass to help meet it.

Glass for your home

See how the correct choice of glass can help transform a home – and even our wellbeing.

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122 Leadenhall - The Cheesegrater

The 75,000 square metres façade features a curtain wall that is double glazed to allow for a high solar protection on neutral-looking glass.

Fruit and Wool Exchange

The new-build façades are predominately brick-faced, with punched windows to reflect the surrounding context.

Caudwell International

Curved glass, punch windows and precast stone panels make up the envelope on a figure-of-eight footprint.

Discover our showcase projects, captured through the lens of professional photography.

Explore Guardian Glass projects in your area and beyond with Google Street View and be inspired by the possibilities.

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Find out more about how glass can support sustainable design

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Glass trends and innovations

See What’s Possible™ and be inspired by glass innovation 

Do you want your next renovation project to be inventive? The signage in your public square project to stand out? If glass isn’t at the top of your list of innovative building products, it probably should be.

Oversized glass

Glass allows us to connect to our environment while maintaining privacy and security. Add its ability to create different looks and improve performance levels, and its value grows still further. You can enhance those attributes when you select jumbo glass for your project. Oversized glass continues to gain momentum as a leading architectural glass trend, finding its way into almost any application.

Residential towers

Residential towers become more inviting when floor-to-ceiling views aren’t spoiled by shades or screens, because high-performance, jumbo glass helps block excessive solar heat and contributes to energy efficiency.

Residential towers

Retailers

Retailers can create bigger, more interesting displays because oversized glass doesn’t need heavy metal framing that breaks up visual continuity.

Retailers

Museums

Museums can feature more treasures more ways using oversized, low-glare, high-performance glass to both highlight and protect the art inside, whether used on the exterior or interior.

Museums

New construction and renovations

New construction or renovations become innovative and inspirational when they replace opaque walls with oversized glass, or curved, tinted or unusually shaped oversized glass.

New construction and renovations

High-performance glass 

Building performance codes are evolving rapidly in every part of the world, creating the need to retrofit with designs that also contribute to the structure’s energy performance. High-performance glass can help ensure your projects meet and exceed local, national and international requirements. As citizens, communities and companies increasingly value social responsibility, buildings that boast high-performance glass that exceeds current requirements have a clear advantage. 

Digital signage and displays  

Digital signage can be arresting and powerful and glass used here helps create a true interactive experience. It can reduce glare, enhances contrast and provides wide viewing angles that attract interest and draw the user in. Today’s touchscreens also reduce fingerprints, the “sparkle” effect, glass and haze to deliver a clean, engaged experience. As more displays move to 4K, digital signage glass becomes even more immersive. Concierge services, community alerts, local offers and more are just some of the communication options interior and exterior digital signage glass makes more inviting, interesting and gratifying.

Digital signage can be arresting and powerful and glass used here helps create a true interactive experience.  Smart mirror displays also make your experience more personal while opening up spaces and offering more interior design options, whether it’s a television that converts to a mirror when power is off or interactive home gyms. 

Renovation and retrofits 

Although the juxtaposition of old and new might not be a recent trend, there is still value in making “old” buildings “new”. Renovation and retrofits opportunities  around the world:

  • Urban decentralization can be caused by population movement from the center to the periphery, or from a highly populated city to nearby smaller towns. In either scenario, the result can be a large inventory of vacant commercial and residential space in the urban center.
  • High vacancies can slow new construction where aging buildings already dominate.
  • Aging buildings can be made more energy efficient and soundproofed, changing them from “urban blight” to desirable “contributing citizens”.

Renovating and repurposing older buildings also offers some environmental benefits over the alternative of demolition and rebuilding. Improving the energy performance of existing buildings can save money and resources, create a more comfortable interior for occupants and at the same time reduce the building’s environmental emissions. Glass retrofits, particularly, can play a significant role.

A high proportion of energy loss, solar discomfort and lack of sound insulation in older buildings occurs because of the original fenestration. Now with such a wide array of aesthetic options and as many levels of solar performance and light transmission, glass renovation will have an immediate impact on the building value.

Home and interior design 

Glass for interior design in the home has moved on from only elegant mirrors, bright backsplashes, and modern showers. It can now also go to work in the home office, with a translucent glass partition that hides your cluttered desk from the rest of the room, or a glass wall or door that allows you to work in silence but keep an eye on the kids. The addition of interior glass can introduce daylight and help retain views in new spaces and repurposed rooms. 

And glass in commercial interior spaces can provide solutions for any environment without sacrificing natural light: 

Translucent panels

Translucent panels in medical examination rooms offer easy-to-clean surfaces and the comfort of daylight while maintaining privacy.

Translucent panels

Glass wall

A glass wall of a conference room can double as a vast whiteboard for brainstorming.

Glass wall

Glass desks and tabletops

Glass desks and tabletops bring a contemporary feel to a repurposed, brick-and-wood space.

Glass desks and tabletops