Winners Announced for 2020 Vanceva® World of Color Awards™

This year's exterior winner of Vanceva's World of Color Awards™ (WOCA) — an international competition that recognizes architectural projects that use Vanceva interlayers for glass — is a museum expansion that is totally encased in an all-white glass façade. Like current and past winners of this competition, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston — Kinder Building in Houston, Texas, USA, exemplifies how magnificently glass can be incorporated into architectural design.

Eastman, the manufacturer of the Vanceva Color System for laminated glass, shares the news of this year's winners in a unique and creative way. Due to the pandemic restrictions, the announcements are reorganized from the usual procedure into a digital live stream event with dynamic video presenting the winners and a special guest host. There will be two sessions in the morning and in the afternoon on Tuesday, November 10th, beginning at 10am (CET) and 5pm (CET) at the following link 2020 WOCA Winners Presentation.

 "The World of Color Awards grows larger each year it is held," says Priya Kalsi, Global Market Segment Manager with Eastman. "We've received some incredible entries this year. Architects and designers are continuously exploring and surprising us with their creative use of Vanceva color interlayers to create landmark buildings, special effects and moods in interiors, and even in wayfinding."

"This year's winner stunned the jury with the use of white interlayers," says Kalsi. "The Museum of Fine Arts Houston is unique, inventive, and transforms the streetscape — and it only uses Vanceva Arctic Snow for its interlayers."

A key requirement for entry in the international design competition is the use of Vanceva color interlayers in laminated glass configurations. Vanceva provides architects and designers with the largest system of PVB interlayer colors in the world with a palette that can be combined to create more than 17,000 transparent, translucent, or solid colors.

An international jury of five celebrated industry professionals reviews the project submissions and awards are given for EXTERIOR Division Winner, INTERIOR Division Winner, and four Honorable Mentions. Entries are judged on the creative use of glass with laminated color interlayers, aesthetics, and degree of attention given to the overall benefits and technology of laminated glass.

WINNERS

EXTERIOR Division Winner:  Kinder Building — Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX, USA

Architects:  Steven Holl Architects

Façade Contractor:  Josef Gartner (Permasteelisa North America)

Glass Fabricator:  ShenZhen ShenNanYi Glass Product Co., Ltd 

Façade and Structural Engineer:  Knippers Helbig Advanced Engineering

Featured Product:  Vanceva PVB in Arctic Snow

Steven Holl Architects designed a showpiece for the expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. The entire structure is encased in white glass, from a canopied entrance to clerestory windows to a double-layered facade of laminated glass tubes over an opaque weather wall. Translucent interlayers fine-tune the desired light transmission so that the museum's art is enjoyed in natural sunlight, yet remains protected from damaging UV rays.

ShenNanYi fabricated the ventilated facade of approximately 1,150 translucent glass tubes in front of opaque walls and large punched windows with a steel substructure with an invisible structural glazing for support. The glass tubes are acid-etched with four translucent Vanceva Arctic Snow PVB interlayers that precisely control the amount of daylight passing through them while providing a high degree of safety.

The design's absence of color is not lost on WOCA juror Benjamin Wright, saying, "As an aesthetic maximalist it seems somewhat contrary to award a color award to a monochromatic white building, but in this case the architects and fabricators have used the shape and nature of the glass to optimal effect. The challenge of lighting a museum with natural light can not be understated, and I look forward to visiting this work in person and exploring the building and collections."

INTERIOR Division Winner:  Kaleidoscope, Tianshu City, Gansu Province, China

Architects:  SAKO Architects

Glass Laminator:  Shanxi Jingfeng Glass Co., LTD

Featured Product:  Vanceva PVB in Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, and Blue

SAKO Architects designed Kaleidoscope to ignite children's creativity with its pattern of laminated glass with 10 vibrant Vanceva Interlayers fabricated by Shanxi Jingfeng Glass Co., LTD. When sunlight shines in from classrooms and the atrium's glass ceiling onto the school's central stairway, colorful shadows of varying shapes form free-flowing rainbows for a kaleidoscope effect that rotates with the sun's movement throughout the day. At night, interior lighting turns the building into a breathtaking piece of art.

WOCA juror Ammar Al Assam acknowledges the architects' intent to create a joyful learning environment, saying, "Beautiful and playful application of colored glass, making the kindergarten look inviting, cheerful, and inspiring to the children. The proportions of the color splashes against the white envelope feel just right, and the choice of soft gradient colors too."

Honorable Mention: EADA Business School, Barcelona, Spain

Architects:  CDB Arquitectura

Glass Laminator:  Vidresif

Featured Product:  Vanceva PVB in Sahara Sun, Sapphire Blue, and Arctic Snow

WOCA juror Benjamin Wright fittingly describes the façade's new design, saying, "The tastefully reserved yet brilliantly colored undulating pattern of the vertical louvers transforms an utterly nondescript facade into an architectural eye catcher."

Honorable Mention:  Galerie Artem, Nancy, France

Architects:  Agence Nicolas Michelin and Associates (ANMA)

Glass Laminator:  Ariño Duglass

Featured Product:  Vanceva PVB in Coral Rose, Sapphire Blue, Aquamarine, Smoke Grey, and Ruby Red

"The Hall is not just a link between all the buildings of the campus, but also interacts with them as one ensemble," explains WOCA juror Paul Eis. "Galerie Artem shows a high quality in city planning aspects in context of the play with the small-scale historic cityscape in the surrounding. All in all, a striking project not just WITH colorful laminated glass but BECAUSE of colorful laminated glass!"

Honorable Mention:  OSZO 44 - The Chromatic Circle of Johannes Itten, Zurich – Küsnacht, Switzerland

Artist:  Ritchie Riediger  

Glass Laminator:  FlachGlas

Featured Product:  Vanceva PVB in Golden Light, Sahara Sun, Aquamarine, Coral Rose, Evening Shadow, Sapphire, and Ruby Red

WOCA juror Paul Eis says, "…through its simple but intelligent composition it is not only a single object but interacts with the whole surrounding in an expressive way. The play of light, shadow, and color shapes the whole place new at every time. With this, it moves the time as fourth dimension of architecture in the foreground."

Honorable Mention: Taipei Performing Arts Centre, Taipei, Taiwan

Architects:  Rem Koolhaas | www.oma.eu

Glass Laminator: Cricursa | www.cricursa.com

Featured Product:  Vanceva PVB in Shale Grey from the Earth Tones collection

WOCA juror Ammar Al Assam describes the design as "Innovative façade approach, and functional:  through Vanceva films, there is a clear visibility to the outside, while maintaining UV protection and thermal control. The large format glass panes in S-curved cross-section allowed for less visual obstruction from structural elements. The curvy surface also generates playful distorted reflections, inviting the space users for an amusing and/or inspiring interaction with the façade."

The Vanceva Color System offers architects and designers unparalleled creative freedom to incorporate color into glass and glazing systems using tinted interlayers, which are laminated between two pieces of glass. A palette of 16 colors can be combined in up to four layers to produce more than 17,000 transparent, translucent and solid glass colors. Vanceva color interlayers also offer all the benefits of polyvinyl butyral (PVB) interlayers for laminated safety glass, including security, solar control, sound insulation, and UV protection.

Saflex® and Vanceva® brand PVB interlayers are one of the most trusted names in PVB interlayer technology for laminated glazing, delivering outstanding performance and durability, backed by reliable and knowledgeable service. As a result, they are found in nearly 40 percent of laminated architectural and automotive glass worldwide. 

All 2020 WOCA entries can be viewed online at www.vanceva.com/winners.