Surface Design Awards – Complete

• EXTERIOR SURFACE OF THE YEAR - NEW
  This is a new category that recognises wall and surface design products including decorative, creative and inventive surfaces for the exterior of building including both commercial and residential properties.

• LANDSCAPE + PUBLIC REALM
  The space around, between and within buildings that is publicly accessible, including streets, squares, parks and open spaces. These areas and settings support or facilitate public life and social interaction.

We designed, manufactured and installed a 72sqm retaining wall for an external lightwell. The School was building a basement classroom - to provide new space - and the architect, to bring daylight into the room, created an external stairwell. We were asked to design and install this glass art feature. A big advantage of using glass in this context is it will need almost no maintenance over many years. Perhaps, a hosing down once a year. Adding the artwork to the glass brings both light and life into the classroom. The additional cost of adding in the image to the glass was relatively small.

The design has been printed digitally onto a film and supplied to site as a laminated glass. The top layer has been made thicker to allow the for 1.5m high cantilevered balustrade.

Laminated glass 3.08 kg

The main issue was to engineer the project so the glass was simple to install, yet was able to support the tall balustrade. The artwork adde inside the laminate, ensuring that the image was visible without any backlighting required.

This is such a simple but effective way of giving basement areas a much more sustainable and maintenance free appearance. These areas often look quite dark and even if the image was plain white it is a better and more reliable way of bring light into light wells.