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New Arena Features Unusual Glass Doors

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New Arena Features Unusual Glass Doors

New Arena Features Unusual Glass Doors

If you’re an NBA fan, you’ll want to take special notice of some unusual glass doors that help create the façade of the new Sacramento Kings Golden 1 Center. The new arena opened at the beginning of the 2016-17 NBA season.

When you think of “glass doors,” you think of doors that are vertically hinged and open inward or outward, depending upon which side of the door you’re on. You might also envision a “garage-door” style door – one that is segmented, and travels on a track. It’s stored overhead when the door is open and is positioned vertically when the door is closed.

And then there are the doors at the Golden 1 Center. They’re neither of those kind of glass doors, although they’re closer to the garage door than the standard commercial hinged door. They lean at a vertical angle of 11 degrees, in part to minimize reflections from the California sun.

The doors, designed by Schweiss Doors of Hector, MN, are bifold doors, but they’re hinged horizontally instead of vertically. The doors are opened by means of a strap-and-motor system that lift each of the 14-ton doors and fold them neatly overhead, with the folded doors forming a canopy of sorts over five doorways, which are each about 30′ wide.

The five doorways are clustered together in one corner of the building and provide ample access to the arena. The arena also features conventional doors at the base. Fans can enter and exit the building at about three times the rate of a conventional gate-keeping design. When the doors are closed, they work as “window walls” allowing light into the interior. The primary purpose of the Schweiss doors is to add natural cooling to the building. They’re oriented to take advantage of natural wind movement.

There has been talk of holding games with the doors open, and the team believes it can control the temperature and humidity in the building enough to make that a reality. The team says it will hold practices and exhibition games with the doors open in order to collect data and monitor environmental conditions inside the building. In addition, the building can host concerts and other live performance events with the doors open to both increase the size of the audience and to allow guests to take advantage of the plaza that surrounds the arena.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: CommScope, via Flickr.com

New SF Apple Store Features 42-foot glass doors

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New SF Apple Store Features 42-foot glass doors

New SF Apple Store Features 42-foot glass doors

Last month, Apple opened a new retail space in San Francisco’s Union Square to replace it’s Stockton Street facility, one of the company’s original retail stores. The Union Square store represents not only an updated retail space, but also a new approach to retail at Apple. The store features many notable changes to Apple’s previous retail designs, but one instantly recognizable feature is the store’s 42-foot sliding glass doors that open dramatically each morning to welcome Apple customers.

Apple store signals new role for glass

The store makes significant use of glass in its design. Aside from the sliding glass doors, the store also features a façade made entirely of glass, and dramatic glass staircases that travel between the store’s first and second floors.

Adjoining the store is a plaza, which the company rehabbed. Visitors can find free Wi-Fi, a green wall and live performances, along with a sculptural fountain originally created by San Francisco artist Ruth Asawa in 1969. The plaza is publicly accessible 24 hours a day. In addition, the store design incorporated solar panels on the roof, and the store uses 100% renewable-sourced energy.

The company has indicated that its Union Square design will be replicated in other major retail locations. Glass will play an important role in the new design because, in part, the company wants to underscore its commitment to transparency, removing barriers and blending the transition between interior and exterior.

The company has begun work on renovating New York City retail space, and a new glass-inspired store in Stockholm, Sweden. The 5th Avenue store in New York City already employs an iconic glass cube, installed in 2011. One of the cube’s glass panels shattered in 2014 during a winter storm, when it was hit by debris from a snow blower. No one was injured in the incident, and the panel was replaced at a cost of about $450,000.

If you’d like more information about decorating with glass in either a commercial or residential setting, please check out the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Frank Farm, via Flickr.com

Interior glass doors

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Interior glass doors

Interior glass doors

If you want to create a contemporary look for your home, consider the addition of interior glass doors in your home. Interior glass doors are a significant decorating trend that can increase the beauty and value of your home using sustainable, ecologically friendly and responsible materials.

Why interior glass doors make sense

For some people, decorating is about more than expressing style. Increasingly, people are taking the ecological impact of their lifestyles into account when decorating their homes. The use of renewable, sustainable and ecologically friendly materials is a serious consideration, so glass is high on the list of materials welcome in this approach to decorating.

Glass is infinitely renewable. As an added bonus, the recycling process for glass takes less energy than the process for producing glass from scratch. By incorporating different materials, glassmakers can create different desirable characteristics for the resulting glass, including textures, tints and varying degrees of strength.

Glass doors are commonly used in offices and retail spaces, but they’ve only recently made their grand return to residential decorating. Prior to the Great Depression, glass was one of the materials commonly used in residential decorating. The poor economy of the 1930’s followed by material shortages in the 1940’s effectively reduced the use of glass in residential decorating in favor of simpler, more easily mass-produced materials.

From an economic standpoint, glass is common and readily available, and the materials used in glass production are simple and abundant. The float glass process wasn’t perfected until the 1950’s, but glass has been used extensively in the US for hundreds of years. In fact, the first glass factory was built in what is now the United States in 1608! Glass was a staple in certain types of furniture, including cupboards and cabinets, but whether for practical or preferential reasons, the use glass virtually disappeared in interior design in the US in the first half of the 20th century.

Fortunately today it’s making a resurgence, and in a big way! There have never been more options for incorporating glass into residential spaces, starting with interior glass doors. Interior glass doors can be left as-is, or they can be augmented with special coatings like Glassprimer™ glass paint. Glassprimer™ glass paint is durable, easy to apply and produces excellent results. Glassprimer™ glass paint creates a permanent bond with the glass, and offers exceptional UV resistance. This allows the penetration of light, while reducing the amount of heat generated by UV-light. In addition, Glassprimer™ glass paint can be used to enhance privacy as a cost-effective substitute for acid-etched frosted glass.

If you’d like more information about applying Glassprimer™ glass paint to interior glass doors, please check out the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store.

Photo Credit: Toth Istvan, via FreeImages.com