Jul 13 2007
A piece of ancient Roman history in northern Italy can now be viewed within its architectural context, thanks to DuPont™ SentryGlas® Expressions™ decorative safety glass.
During recent restoration of the 18th century baroque church of St. Stephen in Vicenza, near Venice, Roman tombs and portions of Roman church walls were discovered under the church floor. Enabling the finds to be viewed in place posed considerable challenges to architects working on the church restoration. Their solution was to replace portions of the church’s marble flooring with transparent DuPont safety glass which was color-matched to the church’s pink Asiago marble and designed to look exactly like the church’s flagstone flooring.
Visitors now can safely view the tombs while standing on the 27mm thick decorative laminated glass construction made of DuPont™ SentryGlas® Expressions™ from DuPont Building Innovations . SentryGlas® Expressions™ marries two core DuPont technologies – laminated safety glass and inkjet printing – to enable architects and designers to harness digital technologies in producing decorative glass designs that provide all the stiffness and strength of safety glass. It can be used in decorative flooring designs such as at St. Stephen’s Church, as well as in walls and doors, stairways, windows or external building facades.
“Being so versatile and easy to implement, SentryGlas® Expressions™ has become a gateway to a new world of creative expression in decorative safety glass: a fast, efficient, and flexible world,” said Patrick Cazuc, DuPont Glass Laminating Solutions’ European director.
DuPont™ SentryGlas® Expressions™ is gaining increasing use for its ability to elevate design possibilities in applications including Milan, Italy’s Children’s Hospital and Sacramento, Calif.’s Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament’s newly redesigned dome. SentryGlas® Plus has been chosen for many innovative and award-winning installations worldwide such as the ultra-clear viewing panels for the Top of the Rock Observation Deck at New York City’s Rockefeller Center; wind- and bomb-resistant windows for the Miami, Fla., U.S. Federal Courthouse; glass staircase steps and balustrades in a number of Apple Stores worldwide, and; the uniquely designed Shanghai Oriental Arts Center in China.
DuPont Building Innovations is a strategic business unit of DuPont that manufactures and markets category-leading brands such as DuPont™ Tyvek® Weatherization Systems , DuPont™ SentryGlas® interlayers , and DuPont™ Corian® solid surfaces.