Project Stella Maris

Posted on July 3, 2015 by central@gjames.com.au

As you approach the main entry of this church you are greeted with a stunning image printed on glass of “Madonna and Child” by Giovan Battista Salvi, “Il Sassoferrato”.

ColourLite Image digital ceramic glass printing by G.James offered the architect a cost effective and long term durable solution, creating a signature dimension.

“The image of the Madonna and Child is all embracing as we enter the front door of Stella Maris Catholic Church. This age old image draws us like the Child to His mother. The curtain walls bring light and shade to the sanitary. The two columns of glass are a symbol of water. Water is symbolic of our Christian faith.”
– Sonya Slater, Stella Maris Catholic Church

“The original concept was achieved and that was the building was to be a building within the park and the park within the building. We were able to produce large pieces of glass which had high resolution that has longevity and is easy to maintain.”
– Lee & Sandra Dunne, Architect

“G.James assisted greatly at the design stage of this project. This made the process of ordering and supply of the products so much easier, with our client being thrilled with the final product.”
– Dave Stewart, NGA

Location	Broadbeach, Gold Coast, QLD
Glass	GJ ColourLite Image 13.52 mm Heat Strengthened Laminate GJ ColourLite Graphic 13.52 mm Heat Strengthened Laminate
Architect	Patrick McGuinness and Lee Dunne, Architects. Sandra Dunne, Interior Designer
Builder	Stokes Wheeler
Glazier	NGA
Photographer	Scott Burrows

Next Generation ColourLite Technology

Posted on July 18, 2014 by central@gjames.com.au

Cardboard Cathedral G.James Glass & Aluminium has recently enhanced its ColourLite ceramic printed glass range and capability with investment in the next generation ceramic on-glass printing technology. This process is renowned internationally as one of the world’s leading digital on-glass printing systems.

Australian architects and designers now have access to a new world of high-definition, full colour glass printing capabilities, including photo-realistic images that will redefine the role of printed glass as a design showpiece for façades, feature walls, interior fit outs, signage and other architectural highlights.

On-glass digital ceramic printing differs from other printed glass technologies in its vivid richness, hardiness and imaging flexibility. The digital ceramic inks are made from microscopic glass particles and inorganic pigments that are fused to the surface of glass through the glass furnacing process. The result is an extremely durable product that is highly resistant to fading. ColourLite ceramic printed glass is a truly robust imaging system with the capacity to handle the most expressive, forceful design ideas.

Lewis Saragossi, Managing Director and Chairman of G.James, says as a local manufacturer, he and his team are delighted to introduce new ColourLite capabilities to Australian architects and designers.

“We are very excited to add this new technology to our extensive product line and offerings,” he says. “We have spent a great deal of time evaluating the various technology options to find the one that would best match the needs and demands of the Australian market as well as current and future design trends. Our customers are impressed with the short lead time, available from our three local manufacturing facilities in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.”

This new imaging software allows designers to accurately portray single images over multiple glass panels, and there is flexibility to present different designs. For example, the printing system allows for a continuous design to cover the full extent of a building façade for maximum impact. This includes the possible use of full perforated imaging to the vision panels. The unique digital system caters for either individual or multiple panel printing without the excessive cost and limitations of a silk screen.

Whats New?

High definition 720dpi printing
Glass thickness from 4mm to 19mm
Automatic inline pre mix colour range
Sizes from 300 x200mm to 4000 x 2300mm

1. Cardboard Cathedral Christchurch New Zealand Image supplied by Dip-Tech Photography by Bridgit Anderson 2. Fletcher Hotel Amsterdam, Holland Image supplied by Dip-Tech 3. G.James Glass & Aluminium Cairns, Australia Photography by Mark McCormack

Soul Apartments, Surfers Paradise

Posted on November 28, 2013 by central@gjames.com.au

Soul tower, Surfers Paradise - Balustrades, sliding doors and fixed windows Soul Apartments were constructed at an exclusive location by the water at the heart of Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast. The tower reaches 77 storeys, including 2 levels of commercial premises at the base, one level of leisure facilities for the resident population and the tower above devoted to lifestyle apartments.

The 243m high building was designed by DBI Design PL and built by Grocon, under the direction of the Juniper Group. The tower is situated at the end of Cavill Avenue – the popular shopping strip at Surfers Paradise. G.James Glass & Aluminium won the contract to supply the design, fabrication and installation of the glazing – including windows, doors, louvres, curtain wall, sun blades and balustrades.

Glazing on the Soul Apartments, Surfers Paradise

The Soul of Surfers Paradise.

The printed glass awning of the shopping precinct.

The Residential Tower Facade

The residential tower consists of 288 apartments with a variety of glazing types – a curtain wall face, balconies with sliding doors and windows. The sheer curtain wall façade was produced using the 650 Series glazing system, and fitted between the concrete support columns. Sky blue laminated glass contrasts well with the white columns in the marine setting. The majority of the project’s extrusions were powder coated (finished) in Eternity Steel – a dark finish that blended into the shadow lines.

Beach front tower views.

Soul Apartment tower – Blue and White

Looking over the ocean, the glazing takes full advantage of the view.

Sliding doors and windows – Interior shot.

The balcony glazing utilizes the 445 Series sliding doors, 450 Series fixed windows and 415 Series louvres. The balustrading for the tower was done with 571 Series. At the top of the building, the shape of the balustrade glass was raked from level 60 and above to support the curved aspect. The raked balustrades required special layouts and bracketry specific to the level they are installed on to make the curve regular.

The apex of the towers shaped like the curve of a wave.

Balustrade from a balcony overlooking the beach.

The tower colour scheme contrasts vivid blue sections with predominantly white areas. The blue areas were created using sky blue glass, the same as the sheer wall. The white areas use a Cool Grey glass. The Balustrades match the colour coding of the area they fall in, and intensify the look with a reflective coating.

Soul tower, Surfers Paradise - Balustrades, sliding doors and fixed windows

Just a stones throw off the world famous Cavill Ave.

Looking down over the printed awnings.

Facing the ocean.

Sun blades are installed on the upper portion of the tower. The south face at the sub penthouse level has large angular alpolic blades fitted to the Juliet balconies, creating a visual feature and angled to block harsh glare.

Ensuite on level 72.

Sun blades being installed on the south elevation at the sub penthouse level.

Commercial Levels

On the lower commercial levels, 3 floors high, G.James supplied the ceramic printed toughened glass (installed by others) and balustrading. The ceramic printed toughened glass for the awnings has a creeping fern pattern. The 571 Series balustrades for the first 3 floors were internal and external, and include the the shopping plaza.

Ceramic Printed glass pattern – detail.

Ceramic painted awning – glass supply by G.James

QuickAlly Access

QuickAlly Access Solutions (a G.James business) supplied scaffolding to replace damaged balustrade, recently. The affected glazing occured on level 6 and level 75. Both balustrade glazing occur on balconies with limited space to provide a cantilever, so solutions were suggested and engineered to find the best approach. Ladder beams and other Systems Scaffold products were used for a suspended platform to provide safe access to the high risk heights.

Ladder beams and System Scaffold equipment used together to form a safe access platform.

The platform needed to be used because of concern over the use of abseiling equipment and the procedure was under review.

The platform used for the balustrade glazing replacement.

The Effect

The glazing on this project makes a stunning impression from inside and out, and could not be accomplished without a high level of design and coordination. It was a great opportunity to contribute to an iconic building.

Internal fixed window.

Looking towards Cavill Avenue.

Glass Supply: Era (Pacific Place Precinct)

Posted on March 27, 2013 by central@gjames.com.au

Era The Era project is a $310 million dollar, 42 storey development in Chatswood, Sydney being developed by Mirvac. Era is the fifth and final residential building in Mirvac’s Pacific Place precinct. Era features 295 luxury apartments – most of which sold off the plan within a day of release.

G.James’ Role

G.James has been engaged by 3 separate customers to supply a total of 11,150m² of glass for the project.

G.James is supplying clear laminated and toughened safety glass to be used for windows and doors in the project, as well as Colourlite printed glass for some applications. G.James is also supplying heat strengthened laminated glass and heat soaked toughened glass, which will be used in balustrade for the project. Additionally, some heat strengthened glass is being supplied for use in louvres.

Why use Heat Strengthened glass?

Heat strengthened glass is about twice as strong as ordinary float glass and is used generally as a protection against thermal breakage – it has higher compressive stresses which resist thermal breakage. Heat strengthened has a surface compression induced by a temperature increase and sudden quenching. The existence of the surface compression means that it must be overcome by load before any surface tensile stress is achieved. Heat strengthened glass breaks into large, safer particles. In laminated glass the inter-layer holds these pieces safely in place in the event of breakage.

Point of failure in a sheet of toughened glass due to NiS inclusion.

Point of failure in toughened glass caused by NiS inclusion.

Why use heat soaked glass?

Although rare, nickel sulphide (NiS) inclusions in toughened glass can lead to “spontaneous” breakage. These inclusions are tiny contaminant particles in the raw materials of glass. During the toughening process these particles are altered to an unstable chemical state. If they revert back to the stable chemical state, the particles increase in volume, which can sometimes lead to breakage in toughened glass. This conversion may take years to occur, if happens at all. Heat soaking is a destructive test which heats the glass to 280˚C for several hours to speed up the transformation of any NiS should it be present. This accelerated testing process reduces the likelihood of breakage of installed glass by a factor of 20. Identifying NiS inclusion prior to on-site installation has distinctive cost, safety and security benefits, and is especially important where the consequence of breakage could result in injury – such as when the glass is to be used in exposed elevated positions.

Nickel sulphide inclusions in heat strengthened glass are much more unlikely to cause breakages due to the lower levels of compressive stress.

Looking Ahead

With the continued support from our laminating facility in Brisbane, this project is running on or ahead of schedule and is approximately 50% complete. Era is set to be completed late this year. For more information, please contact G.James glass sales.

Our Bundaberg office gets a new façade

Posted on November 26, 2012 by central@gjames.com.au

Our Bundaberg office has been transformed with the use of our latest colour printing on glass technology. Over the last few months we have covered the topic of digital ceramic glass printing several times on this website. Our Bundaberg office located at 49/51 Enterprise Street, Bundaberg was due for a refurbishment, so G.James decided to put our printing capabilities to use creating a vibrant new façade for the building.

The Bundaberg Branch

The Bundaberg Branch was established in 1972 and is where former branch manager Geoff Thorne started his career with G.James. When Geoff retired in August 2012 he reflected on his time at G.James saying “When I started at G.James, this building was the best looking building in the street. Now that I am retiring, the building is again the best looking in the street”.

The Branch is now managed by Robert Astill and continues to service Bundaberg, Wide Bay & southern sector of central QLD.

The transformation

The old office building was in need of refurbishment after many years of use. The new sales office and showroom features a fully glazed façade with glass spandrels ceramic printed with a full colour representation of the lush sugar cane that is common in the Bundaberg region. The façade fits with the character of the area, and puts a striking face on our sales office. Sunshades were also installed above the vision glass around the building, to help keep the north facing building cool.

The process

The first step was to find a suitable image for the building. The Bundaberg staff were involved in selecting an image they would be happy to have on their office building. It was important to include the staff in the decision to make sure we created a building they were happy to tell friends and family about, as well as work in.

We selected the sugar cane image below, to be placed on a blue background.

Source image: 68cm wide X 50cm high @ 300dpi (8024px X 5940px @ 300dpi) at full size

The next step was to modify the image to maximise the printed effect over multiple floors. We created a concept render to ensure the image wouldn’t appear too busy or overbearing.

47 panels of artwork in total, 15 of those were corner panels

After the concept was complete, the G.James team scaled the image file to suit the CAD drawing of the Façade. This resulted in a very large image file requiring a couple of powerful PCs to do the processing work.

Bundaberg Building CAD Drawing – The front of the facade is 16.48m x 6.40m, the sides are 5.11m x 6.40m

Image and CAD drawing combined.

Each panel that required printing was then identified. The vision glass panels were excluded and we printed on a total of 47 spandrel glass panels.

Talk of the town

The façade has already attracted significant attention from those passing by, and has transformed our sales office into an exciting and unique advertisement for our business.

Keep your eyes peeled for another exciting transformation in the new year – G.James Cairns.

Who to contact

To find out more, please visit our glass printing gallery, or contact G.James Glass Sales on (07) 3877 2866. Our Bundaberg office can be reached on (07) 4155 4888.

Project Update: Translational Research Institute (TRI)

Posted on October 15, 2012 by central@gjames.com.au

Situated on the Princess Alexandra Hospital campus, TRI is an ambitious new building project nearing complection.

The Translational Research Institute (TRI) is an initiative to bring four of the country’s pinnacle research facilities together with to focus on a range of health and research areas including cervical cancer, breast cancer, melanoma, liver and kidney disease, malaria, HIV, osteoporosis, obesity, arthritis and diabetes.

Designed by Wilson Architects and Donovan Hill in conjunction with Aurecon façade consultants, and constructed by Watpac, the TRI building is an ambitious two-year construction project on the Princess Alexandra Hospital campus in Brisbane’s southern suburbs.

A Strong Façade

The building has three main façade styles present in the structure, each with unique solar, thermal, and aesthetic properties and was technically demanding with the different systems that were required to be designed.

The north façade integrates a glass sunshade designed to reduce solar transmission while keeping the views of the city. The courtyard, sheltered from the elements, was designed for ultimate visibility and aesthetic appeal, and the panelled aluminium sides were designed to keep out noise and light while retaining a degree of visibility.

Glass sunshade

The striking north façade incorporates a red glass sunshade consisting of 1875 individual pieces to protect the interior from excessive heat from the sun.

Due to the sheer scale of the sunshade, assembling the individual pieces of the façade on-site would be too time-consuming. For this reason each façade panel was assembled at the factory, complete with the external cantilevered glass screen.

The resulting panels, each in excess of three tonnes, were lifted into place with a purpose-built lifting frame and used a specially designed hook-on system to make the installation more manageable. Site installation was required for the glass panels over the vision areas, coming to approximately 850 pieces.

Panelled aluminium façade

The aluminium screens are designed to keep excessive sunlight and noise out of sensitive laboratries.

After Screens

Under the aluminium screens are regular windows.

Before screens

Several styles of panelled aluminium screens adorn the west, east, and south sides of the exterior. These screens are designed to allow inhabitants to see out, but keep sunlight and noise out of the laboratories within.

Due to the nature of the hot dipped, galvanised steel support structure in the curtain wall panels, extra care was required in order to meet the extremely tight tolerance of the aluminium screens. Each individual shelf outrigger supporting the secondary steel work and screens for the east and west façades was individually surveyed in order to correctly detail the support steel and ensure over 850 individual panels could be installed to the tolerances required.

The central atrium

The central courtyard is the centrepiece of the entire project, with views of the area from all sides of the building. The courtyard is ringed with large open areas, meeting rooms, cafe spaces and the main auditorium.

The ground floors all open onto the courtyard, with a large glass stairwell at the very centre.

The lower levels of the façade incorporates low-e glass for high visibility, while spandrels consist of external printed glass — said to resemble culture in a Petri dish. The panels for the vision area were structurally sealed to a custom designed opening without any mullions for support, so a bespoke head system was designed specifically for the project in order to secure the façade.

The central staircase sits in the centre of the courtyard, consisting of a shimmering glass exterior structurally sealed to a steel ring beam and suspended from parapet outriggers on the eighth level.

Each steel ring beam in the staircase is made of three pieces consisting of two ‘C’ sections with a straight connecting member. Each level fixed at four locations to the concrete structure and weighs around four and a half tonnes, including three tonnes of glass.

The stairwell façade was built from the top down and utilised a mobile access plant to install the steel and mast climbers on each face.

Completion

The level of technical achievement in this building is impressive. When opened, the facility will house more than 650 researchers, and will have a pilot scale biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility allowing the research, production, clinically testing, and manufacture of drugs and vaccines under the one roof.

At present the front façade is nearly installed, and the project is on track for completion within the next few months. Make sure to sign up for the newsletter for updates on the project, including photos of the finished structure once it’s opened.

Guest post: In depth analysis of ceramic digital printing on glass

Posted on September 26, 2012 by central@gjames.com.au

This month’s guest post is by Bernd Hoffmann of Hoffmann GTD Glas-Technik-Design, and discusses in-depth the process and intricacies of ceramic, digital glassjet printing.

If you haven’t already, you can also read last month’s introduction to digital printing on glass.

Ceramic Digital Printing-customizing Glass Façade Design

Modern digital printing technologies using ceramic inks are providing new interesting opportunities for long-lasting decorations and optical effects on glass.

This way even multicoloured very large format images and decors can be printed and fired on glass providing reflective high-resolution prints, turning the functional glass skin of a building into a more or less translucent artistic screen. After a short introduction into the basic principles of the Ceramic Digital Printing technology and the world of Glass Façade Design the presentation will give an overview about the advantages and limitations of the Ceramic Digital Printing for architectural applications. Different design intentions, challenges and achievements will be presented and discussed. TOPAZ – a helpful concept of preceding considerations for the design process of glass facades will be introduced.

Continue reading →

Glass Printing: Make a Permanent Impression

Posted on August 24, 2012 by central@gjames.com.au

Printing Images on Glass Façades

Glass has been used for both decorative and functional purposes for much of history; the forms and techniques used have changed with our technological advances.

The ancient Romans and Egyptians created decorative but functional objects such as cups and vases from glass. Cathedrals have used stained glass windows for both light and decoration for more than a millennium. A somewhat more modern innovation is digital ceramic printing directly onto glass – and G.James are pleased to be able to offer this new medium.

What sort of applications I can use printed glass in?

Balustrading – Yes. Printed glass would be suitable in this application as standard furnaced PVB (Polyvinyl butyral) laminate if edges are protected, printing to surface #2 (the inner/interior surface) or with an SGP (SentryGlas®Plus) interlayer with unprotected edges, printing to surface #2.
Windows – Yes, with ceramic printing to the inside or in a laminate as above.
Awnings – Yes. A heat strengthened laminate with PVB and SGP is recommended. Monolithic printed glass is not suitable for this application.
Splashbacks – Yes, when combined with two-pack paint backing to obscure the wall behind.
Office Partitions – Yes, as a furnaced laminate only.
Reception areas/Feature walls – Yes. Care should be taken to co-ordinate the colour of the backing wall with the image and its density – a light image would require a neutral tone wall to stop any showthrough.
Pool Windows – Yes, as a furnaced laminate printed to surface #2.
Signage – Suitability of printed glass for this application would depend on the colours required. Laminate would be required for external applications, internal applications could use monolithic glass.
Building Façades – Yes. Printed glass can be incorporated into an IGU and coated if necessary.

What does the printing process involve?

Digital images are run through a specialist software program that separates the image into colour layers available on the Colourlite Image system. The ink used has special ceramic pigments which give it its colour – these inks are lead and cadmium free. The Glassjet printer is a large flatbed printing set up.