SEFAR® VISION Laminated in Expansive Glass Louver Façade on New Research Facility

DEPEW, NY… SEFAR® VISION fabric, laminated between 7,800 glass louvers, impressively graces the façade of a new biomedical research facility at 22 Windsor Street in Cambridge, MA.

Architect Toshiko Mori and her team specified a custom Copper color version of Pulp Studio’s Chromavision™, which uses SEFAR VISION fabric as its substrate. Pulp Studio was the glass laminator, using SentryGlas® from Kuraray America Inc. – amounting to more than 19,000 total square feet of glass. 

SEFAR’s PR 260/25B Custom Copper Colored VISION fabric, coated on each side, allows each of the 7,800 louvers to shade incoming sunlight while providing the clean and highly refined Copper appearance requested by the design team. The 25% open area of the fabric allows clarity while still deflecting a significant amount of sunlight.

The VISION laminated metallic fabric interlayer offers the sleek look of metal, but without the cost of metal or need for thicker glass or mounting reinforcement, as the fabric is a lightweight and thin material. The result is an equivalent effect of heavy metal at a reduced overall cost. It also contributes to energy savings by reducing solar heat gain. Together with glass, VISION excels both visually and functionally.

“On its own, SEFAR VISION is a high-performing material,” says Bernard Lax, Owner of Pulp Studio, the laminator on the project. “But when it is insulated within glass, it even further enhances the fabric’s performance. Integrated with glass that has been tempered, polished, and fabricated, VISION shines as a design component and a contributor to smarter buildings – a perfect example being the new research facility at 22 Windsor Street.”

The SEFAR VISION metal-coated precision fabric interlayer is laminated within glass to create unique aesthetic design possibilities in exterior glass facades, curtain walls, windows, and interior and decorative glass partition wall systems.

SEFAR VISION fabrics can also be printed with UV-stabilized inks to produce any Pantone or RAL color, customizable patterns, and other visual effects without the exterior facing design reading through to the interior. The fabrics are available in six fabric density configurations and each can be coated with three different metal coatings – Aluminum, Chrome, and Titanium – in addition to printed colors or patterns. The variety of the fabrics allows for unlimited combinations for VISION products. Each fabric features plain or twill weaves in a variety of aperture percentages (25-70%) and light transmission percentages (18-60%).

The 22 Windsor Street research facility was completed in January 2016. In addition to SEFAR Architecture, members of the project team included architect Toshiko Mori Architect, New York, NY; façade engineer Eckersley O’Callaghan, New York, NY; glazier Karas & Karas Glass Co., Inc., Boston, MA; and glass laminator Pulp Studio, Inc., Gardena, CA.

For more information about SEFAR Architecture VISION, visit http://www.sefar.com/vision.