Corning® Gorilla® Glass has delivered protection from drops, bumps, and scratches for the past 10 years. While this durable, yet elegant cover glass solution has been featured on more than 5 billion mobile consumer electronic devices, Gorilla Glass is now being designed into other applications.
Lightweight, thin, damage resistant, and optically clear, Gorilla Glass is changing the rules of interior architecture, providing designers and architects with the ability to design outside of the box.
“Architects and designers are always looking for new and different materials,” said Keith Glovins, commercial director of architecture at Corning Incorporated. “In combination with other manufacturers, we’ve been able to deliver solutions that allow the freedom and flexibility they’ve always desired without having to compromise their projects.”
To deliver innovative solutions to the architecture industry, Corning is teaming up with manufacturers, such as Elevecture, to bring the well-known Gorilla Glass into new and exciting spaces.
In this episode of “Inspired by Glass,” host Maddie Gionet from Corning Incorporated heads to New York City to visit the lobby at 740 Broadway to experience how Corning and Elevecture are elevating interior spaces to new levels.
Elevecture is a New York-city based company which laminates Gorilla Glass to a variety of materials such as metals, woods, and even fabric to create products such as panels for elevator interiors and lobbies, as well as lighting.
The collaboration between Corning and Elevecture began years ago when a designer brought a piece of Gorilla Glass, the size of a tablet, to Harold Friedman, the chairman of National Elevator – one of the country’s oldest family-run elevator modernization companies.
“The designer, Luigi Ciaccia, asked my father, Harold, what he thought we could use the glass for,” said Lianne Friedman, president of Elevecture. “And Harold, being the ever innovative man, told the designer, ‘I think we can use it in elevators.’”
Looking to stay on the cutting edge of architectural design, and recognizing that Gorilla Glass could be an architectural solution for more than just elevators, Elevecture was reorganized in 2016 under different management. Since its inception, the mission of the business has been to take once-traditional architectural materials and elevate them to new heights for a variety of interiors.
Seeking solutions to help solve common interior architecture issues such as weight, durability, and damage resistance, Elevecture has discovered the benefits of laminating Gorilla Glass to other materials and is continuing to push the boundaries of how architects and designers can incorporate this versatile material into their designs.
“If you have a wood veneer in a building or in an elevator, it gets scratched up immediately,” said Friedman. “With Gorilla Glass, surfaces become much more durable. When we walk into an architect’s office, and we show them different samples of Gorilla Glass with the Elevecture materials laminated underneath, there is a look of genuine excitement because the design possibilities now become limitless.”
Today, Elevecture products featuring Gorilla Glass have been installed in elevator interiors and lobbies as a customizable, clean, and elegant solution. Featured in the lobby at 740 Broadway, building owner, Eric Gural, said the solution provides a unique experience for visitors and tenants.
“Elevecture’s products featuring Gorilla Glass have had a really beneficial impact on our properties,” said Gural, manager of Gural Family Properties. “The tenants really enjoy their time in the environment, and the clarity of the glass does a great job of bringing light into the space.”
While the 740 Broadway lobby was designed 25 years ago and has remained unchanged until now, Gural said the updated look has spurred passersby to stop, look in, and want to have an experience they don’t normally have in the city.
The possibilities for interior architectural design have been elevated to a whole new level with Gorilla Glass and Elevecture. As designers and architects begin to introduce this thin, lightweight, damage-resistant, optically clear solution into their spaces, the Glass Age continues to enter new environments.
View the full episode of “Inspired by Glass” here.
For more information on Corning® Gorilla® Glass for Interior Architecture or Elevecture, please visit the links below.