Glass and glazing designs and mandates coming from corporate entities can sometimes be both complex and challenging. Priorities can be quite different from the architectural team to the corporate management group on many levels. So when a building project comes together as nicely as the recent Restoration Hardware location in Ontario, a deeper look at some of the success factors is worth reviewing.
Restoration Hardware has locations throughout North America encompassing multiple brands. Their focus is on the luxury lifestyle housewares market. They offer furniture, lighting, textiles, rugs, bathware, décor to adults as well as baby & child and teen segments. In other words, a very broad and interesting product line. With an approach that targets specific age groups comes the need to ensure the space that houses all of this is thoughtfully designed. As for the glass portion of the store design, the architect and manufacturers delivered the beauty and style demanded by the design, while at the same time respecting various environmental considerations, including the safety of birds.
The City of Toronto has specific bird friendly glass and glazing regulations that needed to be met, and thus began the process of finding the appropriate product to meet Restoration’s corporate image, the design style, as well as the municipal building code requirements.
“Restoration Hardware (RH) has a very particular look they mandate for all of their Gallery stores. The windows are meant as ways for potential customers to see into the stores and be drawn in to shop and as sources of natural light used to highlight the furniture vignettes in the stores themselves,” said Jeff Hardy, Principal at Quadrangle. “In the case of this store, AviProtek® T glass was selected because it met the City of Toronto bird-friendly by-law without the use of applied decals, frit or other patterns ensuring the glass was as clear and unobstructed as possible.”
AviProtek® T is a first surface bird friendly solution that is barely noticeable by the human eye but picked up by birds. Walker Glass manufactures and distributes all of its products throughout North America. Its venture into bird friendly glazing was a natural, given their product line and their desire for sustainable environment. Today, Walker is considered the leading supplier of bird friendly glass solutions throughout North America.
“It’s been more than five years since we launched our first line of bird friendly glazing solutions, and over the years we’ve spent extensive time and effort developing products that meet the design criteria and the code requirements of market segments throughout North America. When our products are chosen to be installed in buildings like the ones Quadrangle envisions, we are both pleased and satisfied with our product design features.” said Steve Morren, head of Architectural Services at Walker Textures®.
“RH is driven by a mission to blur the lines between retail and residential, indoors and outdoors, home and hospitality. They have a design aesthetic that is contemporary yet rooted in a fantasy lifestyle that includes materials like Venetian plaster, cypress-like trees, and Juliet balconies all arranged to emulate the look of a historic Tuscan villa. This is successful even though it is located in the decidedly non-Tuscan location of a shopping mall parking lot in Canada.” said Jeff Hardy, Principal at Quadrangle.
Quadrangle practices what they preach when it comes to bird friendly glazing as well. “We have used bird-friendly glazing in other Quadrangle buildings for reasons driven not only by mandatory local by-law enforcement but also as part of an overall sustainability strategy that Quadrangle infuses into many of our designs.”
Projects like this one go a long way to show how the priorities of different partners can be met with proper planning and the right selection of decorative and glazing products, resulting in a beautiful structure.
Project: Restoration Hardware, Yorkdale Mall location
Architect: Quadrangle
Glass Fabricator: Trulite
Primary Glass Manufacturer: Pilkington
Etched Glass Manufacturer: Walker Glass
Product Used: 6mm clear glass Custom T on surface 1
About Quadrangle
“Our firm focuses on hiring people with diverse expertise – this enables us to have incredible collaboration between experts in fields such as content media, retail, hospitality and office design, which has allowed us to build a diverse and wide-ranging portfolio – projects such as Corus Entertainment’s headquarters, the Samsung Experience Store at the CF Toronto Eaton Centre and Flight Centre’s Toronto Travel Centre.”— Jeff Hardy, Principal, Quadrangle
For more information: https://www.quadrangle.ca
About Walker Glass
Through seven decades, Walker Glass has grown, evolved and constantly adapted to an ever-changing business environment. Walker Glass is the North American market leader in decorative glazing substrates. While many things have changed over the decades, the most important things have remained constant. Adherence to our mission and remaining true to our core values are the trusted foundations of the Walker Glass of yesterday, today and the decades to come.
