More Glass Than Walls

Glass Building

Modern high rise buildings in South Africa and worldwide are utilising more and more glass in their make up.

A new building called “The Dancing Towers” has just been constructed in the heart of Sandton. This stunning one of a kind building is a curved silhouette construction combined with striking black and white glass on the complete façade.

Besides the aesthetic appearance of this building architects are utilising more glass to design some"" master pieces"" all over Gauteng.

Performance of reflective Film to glass utilises solar control window film tecnology to reduce glare, control heat gain and stop ultra violet light.

These effects are achieved by metallising and dying of melinex polyester film. Numerous manufacturers like Hoechst, ICI and Dupont manufacture the base polyester film. These films are laminated together to create various styles of window film. Metallised films come in silver, bronze, gold, grey, blue and green reflective sheens, ensuring privacy for occupants from the outside. From inside the view through these various films ranges from clear to slightly tinted or dark tinted and offer huge glare reduction.

Once reflective films have been applied to office windows it eliminates the need for curtains or blinds. With up to 80% of the sun’s radiant heat reflected by the metallised window films, a cool and comfortable working environment is maintained and airconditioning can be eliminated.

Melinex polyester by ICI has an excellent combination of transparency and handling characteristics and a large portion of solar films made throughout the world utilise this grade of material.

Other polyester manufacturers offer different ranges and grades of material.

An increased use of large areas of glass in modern buildings unfortunately presents hazards and risks of injury from flying splinters of glass when broken. If the window is broken, whether accidentally, through vandalism or terrorist bombing, the majority of shard slivers will be maintained and held together by the window film laminates.

This reduces the chance of glass flying into the interior of the building, which under normal circumstances would cause injury and damage. All windows in industrial buildings at oil refineries or chemical plants, need to be protected with a window film lamination. Klingshield has various thicknesses of safety film offering different degrees of anti shatter protection.

ICI Melinex is a sparkling clear film and suitable for applications with very high transparency such as shop front windows. It has excellent mechanical properties and their films have been tested under numerous government testing procedures.
Should you require any further technical information on various styles of polyester films as well as the manufacturing procedure when it comes to window films please contact Leon Levy, our Research and Development Supervisor.

For more information please contact us