Glass panels are a favorite material for architects and interior designers who love their reflective qualities, light remittance, and durable surface strength — but Skyline Design is reminding designers that glass can be a fun material too, especially for kids! Unveiled at NeoCon this week, Skyline’s new line of graphic illustrated glass invites kids to doodle, imagine, or play dress up. The sophisticated shapes and bright colors make a wonderful addition to day care centers, children’s healthcare facilities, educational spaces, libraries, and museum environments.
Skyline Design, located in Chicago, is primarily a producer of etched, textured, and painted decorative glass products for us in architectural applications. They also have a dedication to eco design for children, so in addition to glass, they produce a line of really fun and colorful furniture called Greenplay. Greenplay and Kids Glass both consider sustainable materials that are exclusively low-VOC or no-VOC.
Skyline Design’s commitment to sustainability extends beyond the materials their products are made from. Cutting and polishing glass requires a lot of water to grind, polish and keep the surfaces clean. Skyline captures the water in their production process to be filtered and re-used. They also ship all of their products on a returnable frame system, so that they reduce the waste used to safely package the glass.
Skyline regularly collaborates with architects, designers, photographers, and artists when developing new product. The illustrations in the Kids Glass series were designed by Brian Edlefson and Mark Cook of Thesis, Noël Ashby, and Skyline’s creative director Deborah Newmark.
The glass panels are available in custom sizes up 7’ x 9’, so designers can get creative to use the material as a large wall partition or a small table top. The low-iron tempered glass is ultra clear, and if it ever breaks it will shatter into small puzzle piece-like shapes instead or sharp shards. The glass is also available in opaque or frosty etched options. In fact Skyline has a proprietary Eco-Etch process, which looks and feels like a snowy acid-etched glass without the environmental concerns.
Great post! I love the look of this type of glass. It seems so friendly and fun, and would be an ideal touch to any bedroom or playroom. These types of interesting, unique glass panels would make a wonderful addition to any child’s room. I will definitely be adding something like this to my child’s room. Any time I decide to begin this kind of home improvement, I first check online to see what is available. While I now work for McGraw Hill, I have honestly found that they have the most complete directory for construction products out there. They offer really useful listings of manufacturers, products, information, images, and even CAD details that you can download. They can really make these kinds of projects easier. I really recommend checking them out.