Kalyan Silks – Ernakulam
Ernakulam
- Client
- Kalyan Silks, Ernakulam
- Location
- Ernakulam
- Year
- 2023
- Sector
- Retail
Kalyan Silks in Ernakulam is a large textile retail destination, the kind of building where the shopfront is the shop window and glazing is asked to disappear. TPRS Glass supplied processed architectural glass for the project.
The glazing brief
What retail glazing has to deliver
Retail glazing is about uninterrupted sightlines and the safety consequences of achieving them. Storefronts want the largest possible vision panels with the fewest joints, which pushes thickness up and makes toughened or laminated construction mandatory rather than optional. Where a facade carries branding or pattern, fired ceramic ink is the durable route: printed during toughening, it fuses into the glass and will not fade under ultraviolet light the way an applied film does.
Glass Range
Lines used in retail work
Glass Insights
Retail glazing questions
Toughened or laminated glass, in the largest panels the structure and the opening will take. Retail wants uninterrupted sightlines with as few joints as possible, which pushes thickness up, and at that size safety glass is mandatory rather than a choice. Ground-floor frontage is also the most exposed position in a building, which is an argument for laminated construction that stays in the opening after an impact.
With fired ceramic ink, not film or paint. Ceramic inks are printed onto the glass and fused into the surface during the toughening cycle, so the colour becomes part of the glass and will not fade under ultraviolet light, wash off in rain, or peel. This is the only durable route for anything on a weather-exposed elevation.
Fired ceramic ink will not. Because the frit melts into the glass surface in the furnace it is as durable as the glass itself and is unaffected by sunlight, rain or cleaning. Lacquered and back-painted coatings are interior products and should not be used outside.
It follows from the pane dimensions, the design wind pressure and how many edges are supported, not from a rule of thumb. A four-edge supported pane behaves very differently from a two-edge supported one, so the thickness schedule should come from a calculation against the actual elevation.