SEFAR® Architecture Vision Reaches Highest Heights in Switzerland

DEPEW, NY…Two high-profile venues inside Zurich’s Prime Tower now feature SEFAR® Architecture Vision. Deutsche Bank Switzerland and Clouds Restaurant both specified Vision for its visual remarkability and high performance. In Deutsche Bank, Vision provides glass partition panels for office space, while at Clouds, the product serves as a striking ceiling system.

Prime Tower is a prize-winning skyscraper designed by architects Gigon/Guyer, which rises more than 400 feet, comprises 40,000 square meters of floor space and boasts LEED® Gold certification. Its smooth, reflective blue-green curtainwall and modern cantilevers give the building a sense of movement even as it commands the landscape vertically. Comprised of one main tower and two annexed buildings – aptly named “Cubus” and “Diagonal” – Prime Tower is modern architectural art with an interior to match.

Situated atop Prime Tower, Clouds Restaurant offers gourmet food and stunning views – both outside and in. It holds the tower’s coveted penthouse location on the 35^th floor, bringing first-class service to tenants inside an elegantly decorated dining room. Invoking imagery of the heavens, Clouds features SEFAR Architecture Vision in a striking ceiling application that resembles the dynamic sky.

The shimmering light patterns formed by the room’s Vision ceiling provides visual resonance for the restaurant’s name. The application is referred to as a “ceiling sky,” and is made up of a metal-coated fabric embedded in glass and attached to metal ceiling panels. The various-sized panels were mounted in a concealed substructure at different installation heights to affect depth and contrast as light sweeps the metal fabric.

"In the restaurant Clouds, it was necessary to design the lighting very accurately, as the light sources themselves were not to reflect in the facade," says Stefan Thommen, Project Manager for Gigon/Guyer. "Thus, the light is indirectly illuminated across the ceiling, and the SEFAR fabric creates an elegant effect with its shining surface.”

Clouds selected Vision both for its unique opulence and its ability to meet stringent fire prevention regulations. Further, Vision allows unobtrusive thermal and acoustic control by concealing heating and cooling pipe-work, as well as reverberation-absorbent acoustic fleece for noise mitigation. SEFAR Architecture Vision AL 260/25, the metal coating specified for this application, features a taut twill weave and provides nearly 62% light transmission and 70% aperture for a noticeably iridescent atmosphere.

In the offices of Deutsche Bank, SEFAR Architecture Vision glass partition panels create an intimate, comfortable atmosphere in the rooms. Together with the lighting in the space, the panels exude a shimmering, refined effect and a fine gradation of color through their metal and printed coatings.

Each Vision panel in the Deutsche Bank offices is approximately 11.2-by-6.4 foot and consists of two layers of 8 mm low-iron tempered glass laminated with .52 mm DuPont SentryGlas®. The Vision fabric was combined with DuPont SentryGlas for the open-edged, laminated glass panels, offering structural strength, transparency and edge stability. The product also offers a reduction in the overall weight of the glass panels and enhances the safety of the installation. Its post-breakage performance keeps the glass in place even if shattered.

SEFAR Architecture Vision is a metal-coated precision fabric interlayer, typically laminated within glass or other transparent materials, to create unique aesthetic design possibilities in exterior glass facades, windows and interior and decorative glass partition wall systems.

Vision fabrics are also printable with UV stabilized inks to produce Pantone colors, patterns, and other design effects.  With its unique metal coatings and mesh configurations, Vision improves the thermal insulating qualities for reducing solar heat gain while allowing for light transmission and unobstructed views.  Vision materials can be metal coated on one or both sides to produce the desired effect.

SEFAR Architecture Vision fabrics are available in a variety of metal coatings, aperture percentages (25-70%), light transmission percentages (18-60%) and in plain or twill weaves.

In addition to SEFAR Architecture, members of the Prime Tower project team included architect Gigon/Guyer, Zurich, Switzerland and installer Schmid GmbH, Simmerberg, Germany.

For more information about SEFAR Architecture Vision, visit http://www.sefar.us/vision.