Glass Houses, Speakers, News - Emerging Markets & News For The Window Cleaner

Glass Speakers: Created by Greensound Technology the glass speakers create a 360 degree audio experience from flat glass. Inspired by the ice of a glacier the glass speakers are available in a number of different configurations and even have the option of an added subwoofer. Each speaker can output 25 watts of power and offers 300Hz-15kHz frequency range. This can be increased by adding the Bravura subwoofer to give you lows down to 40Hz, driven by up to 150-watts of power.



Steve Hermann has completed his newest project in Montecito, California. He holds recognition for his contemporary designs. Steve Hermann is a Los Angeles-based architect. His latest project is named Glass Pavilion. Steve Hermann's project is basically a glass house which Steve considers his opus. "Here I have complete privacy," Mr. Hermann said while commenting on his latest project. "It allows you to be one with nature inside the house", he added. The area covered by the project is around three and a half acres.



The space gave Steve Hermann the freedom of creating a home with glass walls. Steve Hermann's home has five bedrooms, five-and-a-half bathrooms, a kitchen, a wine room and an art balcony. It has been learnt that Steve Hermann has an obsession for mid-century contemporary fixtures. He also designed some of the home's furniture. Steve Hermann at first intended to construct the home for himself. He says he changed his plan while his six years undertaking was on the move. Steve Hermann's glass home is now listed for $35 million, while the fixtures and equipments are open to discussion.



Rotating Solar House Generates Five Times The Energy It Consumes: What’s cooler than a rotating house? One whose solar panels produce five times the energy the house uses. That’s pretty incredible, considering that even zero-energy structures are rare. German architect Rolf Disch built the home, called Heliotrope, to follow the sun throughout the day. The structure features triple panes of thermally insulated glass to strike a balance between letting light in and keeping the house cooler inside. A giant 6.6-kilowatt-capacity rooftop solar panel called the Sun Sail slurps up the rays of energy, pumping them into the home and grid. Solar thermal collectors on balcony railings act as water heaters and radiators. On cloudy days, the house can be heated with wood chips and solar thermal heating.
The Sun Sail itself rotates separately from the house, adjusting itself to the best possible position at all times. This gives it a 30% to 40% advantage in energy production over traditional rooftop solar panels. The house is green inside as well. Waste water goes through a purification system for reuse, and rain water collects in a rooftop basin. The toilet system turns human waste into compost. Is it nice to live in? Disch must think so, as he resides in the prototype himself. Two other Heliotropes have been built to date, each costing about $2 million to build.



Rooms at the top: Sweden's stylish new treehouse: Treehouse holidays are going up in the world, but the new Treehotel in Sweden's Lapland, with its futuristic pods, aims to soar above the rest. Like the hotel's other treehouses, the facilities here are fairly basic, not stretching much beyond an environmentally-friendly toilet (some treehouses have ones that freeze the waste and others have ones that burn it into ash) and a sink – meals and showers are taken at the guesthouse, 10 minutes' walk away. At well over £300 per treehouse per night, this is likely to remain a dream for many would-be guests. Over a lunch of reindeer meatballs back at the guesthouse, Britta and Kent explained how deeply rooted their commitment to the forest is. Though the hotel has been designed with fun in mind, it has a serious side too. "The forest for us is a relaxing place, a source of mental peace," said Kent, adding that the couple want to share this passion for the environment with guests. The Treehotel has duly been built as sustainably as possible – the Mirrorcube has even been fitted with an infrared film, visible to birds only, that stops them flying into it – and environmentally unsound activities such as snowmobile safaris are out.

LG Hausys, the LG Group's affiliate engaged in the industrial material manufacturing business, has agreed to launch a joint venture to manufacture energy-efficient glass with Germany’s glass processing specialist Interpane. The move came as part of the group’s strategic efforts to develop its future revenue sources. According to LG, the main products coming from the venture will be low-emissivity glass or Low E-glass. Low E-glass is energy-efficient, designed to block ultraviolet and infrared rays from outside. The product controls heat transfer by about 30 to 60-percent, which LG believes will help building occupants spend less on air-conditioning. It is 15 percent more efficient in heat transmission than non-coated glass, which is capable of transmitting 85 percent of heat. Thanks to such technological advancements, the glass can easily be found at most window suppliers and only costs some 30 percent more than normal tempered glass, according to industry watchers. Interpane is the Germany’s biggest glass manufacturer, which has already realized the ``vertical integration’’ from coated glasses to Low E-glasses, said a LG spokesman.

Glass is main commercial focus of emerging solar technologies in 2010: This year has seen several projects and collaborations by emerging solar cell start-ups to apply their technology to glass, in order to exploit the potentially lucrative building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) market. The most recent partnership announced is an initiative between Norwegian company EnSol and the University of Leicester in the UK. EnSol has patented a thin-film solar cell technology that it aims to develop commercially by 2016. The company has begun working with Leicester's Department of Physics and Astronomy to develop a coating for glass and other surfaces, to produce power on a large scale. The thin-film material is based on metal nanoparticles, embedded in a composite material. Following some modest investments by EnSol, equipment installed at the university department is now able to produce small amounts of the material for prototypes. One application for the coating is windows, as the coating provides a high degree of transparency. The coating can also be optimised further for other building envelope components such as roof tiles, where transparency is not an issue.

Novaglaze Gardner and Newton wins glass contract for the London Eye: IT’S brilliant news that a Huddersfield glass company has landed a contract to provide replacement glass for the landmark London Eye. It is one of the top tourist attractions in the UK and Novaglaze Gardner and Newton must have fought off some stiff competition during the tender process to win such a prestigious job. Novaglaze Gardner and Newton is a testament to the talent, ingenuity and skill we still have in Huddersfield.

A pane of glass has fallen 50 metres from a building at The Rocks in Sydney's CBD. The toughened glass pane shattered and fell from the 17th floor of a residential apartment on Harrington Street just before noon, raining small shards of glass on to the road below, Superintendent Phil Sheedy of the NSW Fire Brigades said. The glass - about the size of a broadsheet newspaper page - had become loose from a balustrade at Cove Apartments. Superintendent Sheedy said it was not known why it had come loose. "It's very lucky that no one was injured," he said.

Glass magic - a film that changes what glass can do: Fogged or frozen windows are the bane of drivers' lives in winter. Researchers have developed a process that allows them to manufacture not just transparent, but heatable films. These films also prevent condensation, ensuring ice cannot build up on the windscreen overnight – and, once and for all, consigning the ice scraper to the trash can. "Our new film is extremely resilient", says Dr. Bernd Szyszka from the Fraunhofer IST. "Temperatures up to 900 degrees Celsius are no problem, and even if you bend it aggressively – the film remains intact." The coating can therefore also be used in large industrial plants where transparent protective heaters are often required to monitor the process chain safely.
What can the new film do that tin oxide cannot? "Our coating system is based on nanocrystalline indium tin oxide (ITO)", says Szyszka. "This material doesn't just have outstanding optical and electrical properties; it is also mechanically and chemically much more stable than tin oxide."
While the advantages of the ITO coating have been known for many years, it is only now – thanks to the Fraunhofer engineers – that these kinds of film systems can be manufactured industrially for a much larger range of applications.

Glass maker Romag said its performance since May had been disappointing and it expected to make a loss this year, despite it winning a £10.2m contract. In a trading statement yesterday the firm, based in Consett, County Durham said disruption caused by the death in June of its popular chief executive, Lyn Miles, 57, after a long illness, had been exacerbated by delays in supplies of key materials as well as the funding squeeze on customers, which left it unable to complete sales until they have had sufficient funds on hand to pay for goods they have ordered.
In addition the company said "erosion" in prices in the photovoltaic market meant it would have to write down the value of some of its inventories before its year end in September. In June the firm, which has seen global attention for its PowerGlaz solar glass, won a deal worth £10.2m to supply solar photovoltaic (PV) systems to North-East affordable energy provider Community Energy Solutions (CES). "The order book currently stands at £16m, including the contract with Community Energy Solutions."

Wine producer Williams Selyem has announced the opening of a new 28,000-square-foot winery in Healdsburg, Calif. Created by the D’Arc Group, the new winery is designed to reflect Williams Selyem’s minimalist approach to winemaking and respect for the environment. The building is organic to the site, reflecting the natural resources of the area. It is also in sync with the style of the wines produced. The overall design theme is based on the image of a barrel. The front exterior of the building showcases an arching barrel wall and features large windows that provide views of the Russian River Valley. Once inside, visitors find themselves in a glass and metal atrium area that looks up into the barrel vault, giving the feeling of being truly inside the wine. Every element of the building design is meant to represent the vernacular of wine. The atrium area features an enormous wall of glass bottles, sourced from Vetreria Etrusca in Italy and designed by Alessandro Belli, an Italian architect who graduated from U.C. Berkeley. Each piece of glass is sealed by a stainless steel champagne crown cap to reinforce the vernacular of wine-design philosophy. In addition to the glazing, the winery also features solar panels on the roof of the parking structure.



Inside the Popemobile: Glimpse of the holy customised Merc that will transport Benedict XVI around the UK. No papal tour would be complete without the sight of a Popemobile. Yesterday saw the unveiling of the official vehicle to be used on Pope Benedict XVI's first official visit to the UK. The Popemobile is a media-coined nickname for the specially customised motor vehicles used by the Pope during outdoor public appearances. Some Popemobile were open topped but the possibility of an assassination attempt led Vatican officials to adopt a new design with a bulletproof glass enclosure for the pontiff. The vehicle's security features include bulletproof glass windows and roof and reinforced, armoured side panels and chassis and it has a top speed of 160mph but while in on papal business in Britain the Popemobile. is expected to travel at a more sedate 6mph.

Demand For Soda Ash Expected To Increase: CASPER, Wyo. ― Soda ash producers in Wyoming and around the world saw an 8 percent drop in consumption last year, but demand is expected to grow over the next five years. An industry report by the London-based research and consulting group Roskill forecasts released Monday forecasts demand will rise by 3 percent through 2015 thanks to glass production in emerging economies in Asia and South America. Soda ash is used in glass, soaps and detergents, as well as in some industrial chemicals. Southwest Wyoming is home to nearly all of the nation's supplies of the mineral mined to make soda ash — trona. The Casper Star-Tribune says the five soda ash producers in the Green River Basin make up about 93 percent of the American industry. Demand for soda ash had grown for nearly a decade but fell in 2009 partly because consumers cut back on glass purchases. The report said the 10.9 million tons produced by Wyoming last year accounted for 24 percent of worldwide production. China accounted for 42 percent of global production. It surpassed the United States as the world's top producer of soda ash in 2003. It's also the largest consumer of soda ash.

Crown Operations International, a Sun Prairie company involved in making energy-efficient window glass, has been purchased by Southwall Technologies of Palo Alto, Calif., for $3.3 million. Crown applies energy-saving films to a plastic layer that can then be sandwiched between two sheets of glass, creating windows that reflect heat and block ultraviolet rays. Southwall, founded in 1979, makes films and energy-saving glass for homes, commercial buildings and vehicles and has about 160 employees worldwide. Its shares are publicly traded on the over-the-counter bulletin board.

NEW YORK—Corning Inc. lowered its estimates for third-quarter glass volume, saying panel makers are pulling back production to deal with excess inventory. Despite the warning, Corning shares continued their recent rebound Tuesday, rising 5.3% to $17.70 as investors were relieved the guidance cut wasn't worse following recent commentary about LCD demand. Shares have climbed 13% in September, rising for two straight sessions, but they still are off 8.3% this year.

Chandler Intellifilm installs window tint that blocks radiant heat: Intellifilm, a new company in Chandler, installs in cars, homes and businesses a new type of window films, technology manufactured by 3M. It is recommended by the Skin Cancer Foundation. It is one of the 3M multi-layer optical films (MOF), which are invisible window films for auto, home and commercial use. They block almost all radiant heat from entering a car, home or business through windows, resulting in a car being 40 degrees cooler after being parked in the sun than it would be with normal tinting. It also lowers fuel costs because drivers use less air conditioning.
Intellifilm was opened in May by owner Adam Carangelo.
COST: Putting the film in a car would cost $499 and up, although that figure is negotiable, depending on how busy the installers are. The company plans to install film in a house in Sedona for $6,500. Some house installations could cost $1,500 to $10,000, depending on the windows.
TECHNOLOGY: Carangelo says it enhances safety in autos because it reduces glare, and it reduces heat in case children or pets are left in cars. The film, a product of 3M's renewable energy division, has been in use in Asia and was recently introduced in the U. S. The technology is similar to that used in TVs, liquid crystal displays and phones. The film for autos is Crystalline, and the film for homes and offices is Prestige.

MPI launches electronic reporting system for glass claims: Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI) launched a Web application that enables glass repair facilities to register claims on behalf of customers. ‘eGlassClaim' interfaces with MPI's claims systems and enables customers to initiate glass claims at the repair shop of their choosing. Under the old system, customers were required to report claims to MPI's call centre first. Glass repair shops will also be allowed to submit invoices to MPI electronically and get paid automatically. Participation in the new program is open to all glass repairers, but is optional.

Police are warning drug dealers are increasingly using a "lethal cocktail" of "dangerous" and "unpredictable" substances to bulk out recreational drugs. A BBC Radio 5 live Breakfast investigation found that dealers sometimes use substances like cut glass to maximize profits. Here a number of dealers, former dealers and drug users in the North West of England and South Wales talk about the practice of "cutting drugs".

Unsuspecting birds fly into the windows, often at great speeds, and suffer severe neurological damage or death. Due to the trauma of the window strike, one of the ovenbirds is unable to perch or stand without falling over. The tiny warbler has shown little improvement in behavior even though it has been receiving pain medication and anti-inflammatory drugs for several days. Since the bird is unable to stand upright to self feed, it must by hand fed by clinic staff several times throughout the day.
Another common injury seen in animals that have collided with a window is extreme swelling of the head. Such is the case with the second ovenbird we are caring for. The bird’s head is so swollen it is unable to blink; it is also having difficulty swallowing. It is receiving non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication. Due to the swelling around the eyes it also needs eye drops and lubricating eye gel several times a day to keep its eyes moist. This ovenbird must also be hand fed several times through out the day in order to maintain a healthy weight. If you have a window that birds may fly into, alert them to the reflecting glass by placing decals on the windows. Closing window shades at times during the day when the sun causes the most reflection will also help. Hanging a windsock outside the window may help break the reflection as well. Many large office buildings are constructed of glass. Be aware when visiting these establishments; if you find a bird that has hit a window and is still alive, call the Conservancy Wildlife Clinic for advice on the proper course of action.



Apple’s Glass Temple, Made in China: The tubular glass entranceway to Shanghai’s new Apple Inc. shop may be its most high-tech feature, considering the iPad hasn’t officially arrived in China. Twelve rounded glass panels stand over 12.5 meters (41 feet) to form the cylindrical dome. Inside, the computer maker’s distinctive bitten-apple logo is suspended above a glass stairway that corkscrews into the underground retail space. The atrium foyer is also a crystalline sign of the times: It was made entirely in China, establishing a fresh benchmark on workmanship for the world’s largest glass industry.
Glassmaking is a rare ancient craft with limited history in China. It got a boost in 1954 when Mao Zedong urged more production of building materials during a visit to a Hebei Province glass factory. In 1971, China’s building materials bureau proclaimed its development of a version of the established “float glass” manufacturing process. By the early 1990s, China had overtaken the U.S. in flat glass production, and its 28.7 million-ton output last year was six times Ducker Worldwide managing partner Nick Limb’s estimate of 2009 U.S. shipments. Now the Chinese industry is ascending the technology ladder.



Brian Clarke: rock star of stained glass: Paul McCartney and David Bailey are fans and friends; Francis Bacon chose him to look after his estate; and later this month the Pope will bless his work. Meet Brian Clarke, the world's grooviest stained-glass artist. For all his famous friends and success as a painter, it’s for his stained glass that Clarke is best known. He has, he says, done ‘more stained glass than anyone, probably ever’, and it’s found in settings as diverse as the Pyramid of Peace in Kazakhstan, the Pfizer building in New York, the Holocaust memorial in Darmstadt and the lobby of the Apax Group in Jermyn Street – the last a shimmering mix of deep blues, greens and carnation reds that is, Hadid says, like a ‘window to the outside world, very controlled, very strong’.
Right now, though, Clarke is having an ecclesiastical moment, having fled the overpowering shadow of church architecture 25 years ago: last weekend, in Linköping Cathedral, Sweden, three of his windows are being unveiled in a medieval church that has never before had stained glass in it (‘They went on a tour of Europe, the bishop and his mates and advisers from Swedish Heritage, to look at contemporary stained glass. And they saw a Cistercian Convent I’d done in Switzerland and commissioned me’). And in 12 days’ time the Pope will be blessing a stained-glass window, suffused in ultramarines and ruby reds, which Clarke has done for the Papal Nunciature in Wimbledon. ‘I’d said it wasn’t really my bag: I’m definitely not holy. But the Papal Nuncio is a genuinely cool guy, he really is; he’s everything you want in an archbishop. It’s a small work, but I’m very, very pleased with it – it’s a winner.’

A stained glass expert from Bristol has died after falling from a ladder while working on an installation at Durham Cathedral. Michael Lassen, above, who was 61, fell from the ladder last Friday when he was working on the installation of a new stained glass window dedicated to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey. Mr Lassen, who is understood to have lived near Bristol, was taken to Newcastle General Hospital, where he died on Wednesday. News of his death was announced in a brief statement issued yesterday by the cathedral's Dean, the Very Reverend Michael Sadgrove, which said: "Our thoughts and prayers are with Mr Lassen's family and friends following the very sad incident in the cathedral. The cause of his fall is not yet known and cathedral staff are co-operating fully with the relevant authorities as inquiries continue."
The Health and Safety Executive is investigating the circumstances surrounding Mr Lassen's death. He was working on the installation of a new "Transfiguration" window, given by the Friends of Durham Cathedral in memory of former Archbishop Michael Ramsey, which was due to be dedicated on September 25. Mr Lassen, who was vastly experienced in his field, had trained in Germany before becoming a glass painter in Bristol. The stained glass window Mr Lassen was installing was designed by Gloucestershire artist Tom Denny and was donated by the Friends of Durham Cathedral to mark their 75th anniversary in 2008. An HSE spokesman confirmed it was investigating.

The American Architectural Manufacturers Association, Schaumburg, Ill., officially launched the new AAMA FenestrationMasters professional certification program. The program was introduced on Sept. 15 during one of the educational seminars. The program coursework covers a wide range of subject matters including performance standards, product and material types and code requirements. Coursework is accessed through My Window Class owned and operated by the National Glass Association, McLean, Va. The online education format allows professionals to complete the coursework at their own pace and convenience, simply through access to any computer with an Internet connection.
There will be two different credentials available through the program:
* Certified FenestrationMaster: To qualify for advanced certification, a 4-year degree in engineering, architecture or applied sciences and 4 years of full-time fenestration-related experience is required or 72 months of full-time experience in the fenestration industry. This credential level requires successful completion of 50 hours of coursework, as well as achieving the required score on the certification exam.
* Certified FenestrationAssociate: To qualify for entry-level certification, a 4-year degree and 12 months of full-time fenestration-related experience is required or 36 months of full-time experience in the fenestration industry. This credential level requires successful completion of 30 hours of coursework as well as achieving the required score on the certification exam.