Glas Italia Headquarters
Glas Italia has been producing high quality glass furniture and accessories for the home and office since 1970, developing seating, shelving, mirrors and partitioning, as well as dining tables and side tables in a broad variety of designs and incorporating transparent, colored and frosted glass.
The signature feature of the 10,000 square-meter building is its external cladding, which encompasses both the pre-existing parts of the structure and a completely new complex. The cladding is formed of a black steel frame mounted with U-glass profiles and set behind the glass are opaque polycarbonate surfaces. The façade is punctuated at irregular intervals by narrow, black steel, window frame insets with horizontal glass lamellas. These provide an additional source of natural light and contribute to the pleasant circulation of air inside the building. On the north side of the building, two cubic structures made of sandblasted, reinforced slab concrete dominate the headquarters, a reference to the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa. One of these buildings contains a fire escape stairway and elevator, while the other houses an impressive conference room accessed by a glass bridge. The irregular U-glass façade is interrupted in part by huge steel gates to provide access for the trucks arriving on a daily basis to deliver materials to the factory which occupies the entire ground floor. Employees and visitors enter the building through the main entrance, an opening in the façade, behind which lies an open-air atrium and garden with a small pond and green area planted with trees. A wooden walkway leads to the light-flooded reception area with glass windows extending the full height of the building. Here, an imposing stairway made of black steel and glass captures the attention and leads to the first floor, where the offices, meeting rooms, cafeteria and showroom are situated. The offices are divided by glass partitions and laid with light-colored Kerakoll flooring, creating an airy and open feeling to the environment. In addition, the three landscaped atriums placed in among the offices allow natural light to enter the rooms, whose ebony floors underscore the elegant ambiance of the building and harmonize with the dark steel frames of the exterior façade.
