New information on daylighting and design trends in glass architecture

More than 900 glass industry decision-makers from more than 60 countries are expected to participate. Architectural sessions of the conference will have highly respected architects, designers and glass specialists as speakers. Topics of the sessions covers for example present-day trends in glass buildings, new developments, glass as an indoor and outdoor building material and use of artistic elements and day lighting.

The GPD 2003 conference is honoured to have Mr Jacques Aschenbroich, Senior Vice President of Compagnie de Saint-Gobain, Chairman and CEO of Saint-Gobain Vitrage and Managing Director of the Flat Glass Division of La Compagnie de Saint-Gobain as Opening Speaker. Mr Jacques Aschenbroich’s presentation will consist of Saint-Cobain’s views on the industry’s latest trends and on the future challenges of glass compared to other competing materials.

Deutsche Post Tower as a case study in the architectural sessions

One of the most interesting architectural case studies to be introduced at GPD 2003 is Deutsche Post Tower in Bonn, Germany, designed by Architect Helmut Jahn and Prof. Dr. Werner Sobek. The case study will analyze the entire design process of the interesting glass tower. The target is to go through all the design and construction challenges and found solutions in order to give useful aspects to be considered in glass architecture.

One of the interesting architectural sessions anticipated by the architects, designers and architectural glass specialists is Current trends in glass exterior glazing and interior use. The chairmen of the session are
Architect Mr. James Carpenter from James Carpenter Design Associates Inc., Mr. Andrew Hall from Ove Arup & Partners Façade Engineering and Mr. Lasse Vahtera from the Finnish Association of Architects.

“Each day the glass becomes more important and versatile element in the architecture. These days it is not any more a window, but glass has become a value-added product giving very essential touch for the design. The Glass Processing Days conference has the ambitious goal to assist the glass industry and architects to innovate together new technologies and ways to use glass and combine it with the other building materials by providing the right forum.,” says Mr Jorma Vitkala, Chairman of the Organising Committee.

New Technical Developments and Applications

One of the targets of Glass Processing Days is to generate new technological innovations. One of the architectural sessions is solely concentrating on new developments and applications. The Chairmen of this session are Dr. Norbert Wruk from Pilkington Deutschland AG and Mr. Frank Rubbert from Saint-Gobain Glass. One of the invited Speakers are Dr. Kevin D. Sanderson from Pilkington Technology Centre and he will talk about Photocatalytic coatings for self cleaning glass. The other invited speaker is Mr. Philippe Armand from Saint-Gobain Glass he will also talk about self cleaning coatings for architectural applications.

Glass Processing Days has been organised seven times. The first conference in 1992 attracted 30 participants. In 1994 the number of the participants exceeded 100, and in 1997 the conference achieved the status of the world’s most respected glass conference with over 600 participants. GPD is organised by Tamales, which is part of Gyro Technologies. Tamales designs and manufactures safety glass lines and machines for the architectural, automotive, furniture and domestic appliance glass industries.