http://www.lensociety.com/glass-bricks/
London Builders: Bathroom, Apartment Glass Ideas. Part One
Glass partitions? If you consider this to be something featureless and office-like, you still know very little about ability of glass to create warmth and comfort! Today you will hardly be surprised by the panoramic glazing – the megalopolis residents are accustomed that the apartment can have one or even few fully transparent external walls. Architects successfully use glass in the interior of municipal housing and achieve shocking results.
Glass partitions are often used: in shopping and office centers, fitness clubs, private interior. And no wonder! In fact, glass is ideally suitable for partitioning of apartments.
You divide apartment space according to your desire. As a result, you obtain a functional and comfortable area.
Daylight comes freely and makes rooms brighter. Furniture from stainless steel well underlines modern design of apartments. One of main features of glass partitions is safety. Their composition includes 10 mm hard-tempered glass. Tempering allows increasing durability of glass by 5-7 times and makes it safe after breakage – glass scatters into small pieces. Usage of the high-impact film forms the “triplex effect” – glass fragments remain on the film.
Strictly speaking, glass blocks are actively used as the fully-featured construction material for a long time. Modern glass blocks did not loose their excellent technical properties (durability, fire and moisture resistance, unique heat and sound insulation), but also became beautiful. And today only few interior designers do not include at least few glass “bricks”. Transparent walls are appropriate both to housing with large area and to a small apartment. Nowadays glass blocks are used for decoration of ceilings, floors and stairs (sometimes even stages), for enclosure of winter gardens, for construction of columns, partitions. If to glaze, for example, part of narrow corridor, it becomes lighter and looks not as a long dark room, but as part of the system of connected vessels. The same effect can be achieved by building the transparent partition between the tiny anteroom and sole dwelling room: if necessary, apartments can be visually insulated by Roman shades or screen. Unlike ordinary glass, glass blocks are less transparent and a little distort the image, making it less evident and mysteriously diffusing it. Therefore, even if you do not decorate the wall from transparent bricks at all, you do not feel yourself as in an aquarium.
Modern glass blocks can be mat, coloured and grooved. Nowadays designer salons also offer glass bricks, on the surface of which the picture from the smallest coloured glass bubbles is formed. Such glass blocks can be elements for whole pictures with landscapes, abstract pictures, images of animals or birds and even portraits. A particular type of glass blocks is blocks that imitate the structure of the natural stone (for example, marble, malachite, granite, agate), linen or jean fabric, mica, sun glints on water. The recent novelty of the market is glass blocks from the “baked” coloured glass. In fact, every block is a multicoloured stained glass, which changes depending on the time of day and illumination. Though the process of manufacturing of such glass blocks is very complicated and costly.
It is possible to build single-colour and mosaic walls from coloured glass blocks. Meanwhile producers offer “bricks” of various tinctures – from pale-beige and greenish to brightly-orange, cornflower blue, navy blue and violet. Clearly, such bright tones practically fully hide everything that takes place on the other side of the glass wall, however, at the same time such partitions admit natural light and in darkness look like the magic lantern due to illumination.
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About the Author
Arthur Prudent is a developer of London builders – web site offering all aspects of builders services.
London builders: bathroom, apartment glass ideas. Part one.
How to install Glass Blocks
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