Glass as a Member of Architectural Design

Facade glazing is the most effective high technology to envelope the building structures. In addition to magnificent surface appearance, facade glazing helps to visually enlarge the area inside the building, as well as significantly reduce the cost of lighting. However, it is quite a complicated and responsible work, as the quality of work affects the durability, aesthetics and working life of the facade, as well as the heat and sound insulation characteristics and a host of other things.

Alexey Michael, CEO of Alpica Group of Companies speaks about the specifics of this business and market trends in the facade glazing.

Today, facade glazing is one of highly competitive markets in the construction industry. So, what was that to help Alpica take a strong position in the market in such a short period?

First, Alpica is a customer-oriented company and this is one of the most important competitive advantages, particularly in the emerging markets which include the facade glazing market. Secondly, we try to stick to the optimal quality-price ratio.

Thirdly, our company designs and installs translucent facades to be durable, easy to maintain and suitable for further repair. It is a usual situation when companies design sophisticated, beautiful facade systems which are impossible to be repaired later. Let me explain it: they can only be made by the company that originally produced such facades and provided the order is big. When you need to have 100 - 200m² of facade reconstructed, the producer won’t take it up. The producer may happen to have left the market or have discontinued the line of the desired brand of glass.

There are many foreign companies, mostly Turkish and Chinese, working in the domestic market of translucent structures and using their own profile systems, brands of glass and materials. But at the stage of designing, there are few of the Russian customers who would wonder what will be happening to the facade of the building in the future. We were invited as experts to make an expert review of the facade defects of one of the major business centers.

The construction of translucent facades was performed by the company which had delivered glass and other materials from abroad. We contacted the glass manufacturing plant with an enquiry and were told that there was no way to find the ordered glass analogues for us anywhere. In addition, no other manufacturer would be able to repeat the same frame structure they were producing.

Using rare foreign materials, no matter how cheap they might be, is the up-to-the-minute benefit, while later the customer may spend huge amounts of money for reconstruction of the facade.

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Materials provided by Alpica Group of Companies