Archinect - News

GKD Mediamesh Display Delights Shoppers In Northern China Mall

2016-10-24T09:00:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by GKD Media Mesh.

The port city of Dalian in northern China is a city of contrasts. A vibrant center of trade and industry, this rapidly growing metropolis plays an equally important role in the region as one of the country's most popular vacation destinations. In the city center of Dalian, the Beijing office of the NBBJ architectural firm designed the Eton Place Dalian tower complex as a superlative multifunctional development: five mixed-use towers standing 41 to 81 stories high and a six-story mall transform the 6.23-hectare site into an exclusive microcosm of urban life. The connecting element between the two highest towers is the spacious mall, with a roof designed in a manner reminiscent of a park. Over six floors, it offers a representative atmosphere for high-class boutiques, a luxury department store, elite gastronomy and a supermarket. Large Mediamesh screens from GKD running around the corners of the building seize the attention of passers-by ...

GKD Metal Mesh Plays Disappearing Act On Interior Office Building

2016-09-26T08:00:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by GKD Metal Fabrics.

White GKD metal fabric plays a disappearing act on the interior of a commercial office building in Toronto, Canada. With sharp geometric lines and vibrant white walls set against concrete floors and metal railings, a few red bucket chairs starkly break up the monotone design. The overall aesthetic creates a futuristic lobby worthy of the busy, interconnected corporate office that caters to premium retail spaces below 14 floors of office space. GKD Omega 1510 was used to create partitions on the second level, hiding walkways and blending into the design allowing the metal fabric to become indistinguishable from the solid white walls.

It’s a brand new feature for GKD in North America for metal wire to arrive from Germany already treated with a white powder coating. The coated wire mesh was handled with extreme caution to avoid scratching the white surface. What GKD representatives expected to be a delicate process turned out to be stand...

The Proven Benefits Of Daylighting On Employees And The Environment

2016-04-25T09:00:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by GKD Metal Fabrics.

There are many benefits produced as a byproduct of incorporating daylighting into an office building design. Access to daylight throughout the day improves employee well-being and overall health, even after leaving the office. Besides creating a pleasant working environment for employees, solar protection also plays a key part in supporting sustainable energy efficiency concepts.

It is important to incorporate a well-designed solar protection system, particularly for buildings with modern glass façades. Glass building façades are often seen as the ideal solution for energy-efficiency, but they are not the ultimate solution - on their own. Glass buildings result in interior overheating from direct sunlight, but there is a simple design solution available that can reduce solar overexposure throughout the day. Adding a material specifically designed for solar shading, like GKD Metal Fabrics’ solar line of metal mesh, offers a way for emp...

Visually Stunning Integrated LED Metal Mesh Transforms Facades

2016-03-28T09:00:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by GKD Mediamesh®.

GKD Mediamesh® is a woven stainless steel fabric with integrated LEDs that is used to create a transparent digital display. This unique product is the perfect solution when a digital display is needed on a façade, yet the view through windows needs to be maintained or air flow is required. Mediamesh® evolved from an architectural mesh product woven by GKD. GKD is a German-based Company who began as a weaver of industrial wire cloth in the 1920’s. These products were used in all types of industrial applications from filtration to aggregate screening to conveying. In the early 1990’s, architects began to look at these metal products and think about their potential uses in architecture. This is how architectural mesh was born.

As beautiful as architectural mesh is, customers still wanted more. They wanted to be able to have images, text, and video on these facades. Ag4 Mediatecture Company in Germany understood this and came up with the ide...

GKD LEEDing The Way In Sustainable Building Products

2015-10-13T09:00:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by GKD Metal Fabrics.

In the ever-growing multitude of green building products available in today’s market, one material that doesn’t always come straight to mind is stainless steel. But this often overlooked material holds a wealth of sustainability benefits that grow tenfold when applied and bolstered by technology such as woven metal mesh. GKD-USA has harnessed the inherent sustainability characteristics of stainless steel, using the material as a medium for creating striking, LEED-worthy building exteriors.

Stainless steel by its very nature, offers sustainable characteristics. Depending on the manufacturer, stainless steel used in metal fabrics can contain as much as 35% post-industrial and 25% post-consumer recycled content. This recyclability directly correlates with minimizing waste. The process of recycling stainless steel involves no health hazardous materials. Additionally, stainless steel:

does not require a surface coating that can deteriorate ...