Remember the phone booth?
In its heyday there were more than two million of them coast to coast. Today they number fewer than 100,000, the same as in 1902.
Welcome to the march of progress. Communication, entertainment, household technology, and a slew of other categories, including building products, have all been transformed by relentless innovation.
Take fire-rated glass, for example. For nearly the last three decades, ceramic glazing reigned as the go-to fire-protective solution. Invented in the 1950s by Corning for consumer kitchenware (cooktops and casserole dishes), ceramics took on a new life in the late 1980s as a fire-protective alternative to wired glass.
Ceramic glazing has some limitations, however. Notable among them: an amber tint, brittleness and fragility (it fails to meet the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s safety glazing standards unless it’s filmed or laminated), high thermal conductivity, overseas sourcing, and a high cost. Still, for many years, ceramics played a key role in architectural glazing applications.
Now Obsolete?
Tim Nass has carefully followed the developments in glazing. As the vice president of sales at SAFTI FIRST, a leading fire-rated glass manufacturer, Nass has discovered that more and more architects refer to ceramic glazing in the past tense. Architects can now use a new generation of glazing products that virtually eliminates ceramic’s aesthetic and performance shortcomings at a much more economical price point.
The evolutionary leap is profound: Architects now command design options few would have imagined even two years ago. So much so, SAFTI FIRST believes ceramic glazing to be obsolete. “USA-made, fire-protective glass is 100% code-compliant and meets all fire, hose stream, and safety requirements without films, laminates, or amber tints,” Nass explains.
Times Have Changed
The transition came with launch of patent-pending SuperClear 45-HS-LI (hose stream, low-iron) a revolutionary fire protective glazing product that is economical, optically clear, and meets all the fire, hose stream, and safety requirements of 45-minute doors, sidelites, transoms, and openings.
Given the benefits, Nass says some architects ask, “What’s the catch?” or “What am I sacrificing?” Nass says the answer is nothing.
“Architects have been constrained by ceramic glazing limitations for so long,” Nass says. “We tend to spec products we know. It’s been 30-some years since a new protective product entered the market. It also happens to be domestically-sourced and aesthetically superior.”
Consider the University of Houston Quadrangle project, where SuperClear 45-HS-LI was used instead of ceramics primarily because of superior optical clarity. “It’s not often that a VE option is an upgrade. In this case, it absolutely was,” Nass says.
A Toast to Then & Now
Ceramics served the industry well for three decades, presenting architects worldwide with a fire-rated glazing alternative.
The good news is, the successor technology boasts all the features architects have long sought in a fire-protective product: superior optical clarity with low-iron glazing, high impact safety ratings, low cost, and domestic manufacturing.
Learn more about how next-gen fire protective and fire-resistive glazing can enhance the design opportunities on your next project.
