For a renovation project of the Wall Street Mall in Dunedin, New Zealand, the architects of Parker Warburton Team Architecture Ltd., New Zealand, developed a design incorporating decorative glass for the interior and exterior. About 705m² of glass were printed for the building using DIP-Tech’s GlassJet technology.
The large decorative glass lites on the exterior serve aesthetic and functional purposes, as the printed image controls the amount of light entering the spaces in the building. The architects’ design required that the glass and inks be durable as the glass will be exposed to the element on both sides.
Despite being notified about the limitations of maximum print size, the architects specified panels about 153in wide. “The only way to print panels of this size was to tile them, print one section, then rotate the glass, and ‘stitch’ the remainder without it looking awful,” says Owen Booth, digital printer operator at Metro GlassTech. “Luckily we had just received the GlassJet software update a week prior, with the ‘print top to bottom’ option, which made this process a lot easier.”