Hamad Int’l AirportDoha, Qatar

Building Partnersthrough Glass

GOING THE DISTANCE: Hartung Glass Industries / Joel Berman Glass Studios Collaborate to

Supply Decorative Glass at New International Airport in Qatar

When HOK, on behalf of their client NDIA Steering Committee, engaged Joel Berman Glass Studios in 2007 regarding collabora-tion on a project to design and create secure corridor glazing for a new airport project in the Middle East, studio founder and presi-dent Joel Berman quickly grasped the scale of the undertaking. It represented the largest, most ambitious art glass project the studio would undertake in its more than 30 year history.

A next generation airport was to be built in Doha, Qatar, and the airport itself was to achieve destination status. The project’s head architect provided his vision: while it was understood that the volume of glass would involve a production effort, each of the three phases was to be a work of art.

Functionally, the requirement was for glazing of the secure pas-senger corridors in three airport concourses. The glass was to be patterned in such a way as to obscure the view within the corridor up to eye level height. HOK was familiar with Berman’s work, and approached the studio with the design challenge.

While researching concepts, Berman’s senior designer, Saleem Khattak, looked to the geography and cultural history of the region. Drawing from the contemplative art of Islam, Khattak developed a contemporary interpretation of the decorative ara-besque motifs that figured prominently in the region’s architectural history. In these motifs, mathematically precise geometric forms in complex patterns serve to express ideas of beauty and perfection,

and symbol-ize humanity’s place in the universe.

Khattak developed a series of algorithmi-cally arranged designs using polygonal shapes to

convey micro, mezzo and macro patterns depending on the viewing distance. Shapes emerge from the pattern as the viewer moves toward, and away from the art. “While each concourse has its own identity,” Khattak said, “the patterns relate to each other.”

To achieve the desired obscurity, the design gradually transi-tions from opaque at the lower portion of each panel through translucency to full transparency at the top. “The spatial in-teraction within the pattern allows light to penetrate while the reflectivity of the frit ink prevents the eye from seeing past it,” observes Khattak. “This effect lends a jewel-like quality to the space.”

Joel Berman named the collection of patterns the Unity Series. “Within the studio a diverse team of talented and passionate artists and designers come together from a wide range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds,” said Berman. “We embrace this diversity; it unifies us. There is a message in the glass, and it’s a message of hope: that through the universal language of design the result will have a unifying influence on the lives of those it touches.”

“We took on a huge job. It was the biggest project we had ever tackled before,” said Ray Jensen, Seattle Production Manager for Hartung Glass Industries. “Combine that with working with three different locations and to come out as suc-cessfully as we did, it was a big undertaking and is some-thing that we’re proud of.”

Approximately 75% of the project was laminated secure cor-ridor glazing for three passenger concourses of Hamad Inter-national Airport and 25% was ¾” monolithic parallelograms for stairwells, escalators and balustrades. ”The project completed was in three phases over three years,” says Hartung Northwest vice president Leon Ander-

Hamad Int’l AirportDoha, Qatar

Building Partnersthrough Glass

son. “The laminated portion of the project was cut, drilled with counter-sunk holes, painted and tempered at Hartung Oregon and then shipped to Hartung Canada where it was lami-nated and then sent to Hartung Tukwila where it was polished, crated and shipped by air and ocean direct to Qatar.”

“The lamination was used to create the 3D pattern effect,” added Bruce Butler, GM of Hartung Glass Can-ada. “The makeup of the laminated was two

48-in. x 80-in. 8mm low iron tempered lites printed with the in-tricate Unity Series patterns on three surfaces including difficult gradient fadeouts and then laminated with .060 SentryGlas.”

Butler continues, “It’s no easy feat to print a pattern on three different surfaces and the logistics was also a big challenge. It was an effort of constant coordination, communication, shared schedules and trying to work as one unit in three different locations in three different states/provinces in two different countries. We had a very strict and heavily document quality control criteria that we lived by. There were quality checks for dimensional tolerances, hole tolerances, pattern resolution. We precision cut everything with our waterjet. We did boil and pum-mel tests to test adhesion. We used color coded stickers on the tags to show that it had passed through a quality gate. Every-thing was recorded at each location.”

“There were four different patterns but probably two hundred distinct sizes and screens which needed to be tracked and

sorted,” said Anderson. “Screens only have a cer-tain amount of passes before they need to be replaced so they need to be managed.

We had most of the sys-tems in place before we started. Every location had approximately a dozen dif-ferent QC criteria that was checked on every piece that was tracked by a unique tag number that was followed throughout the process. Each location would pass their tag and QC infor-mation to the next location/internal customer. Any defects were stopped at a variety of quality gates and sent back to Hartung Wilsonville to be re-cut and to find out what went wrong so we could prevent additional waste.”

“We talked constantly,” said Jensen. “An employee from Joel Berman Glass Studios was onsite here for three days a week for months to physically inspect 30% of the order. Our reject rate was very low. We did an extremely good job at catch-ing defects internally. We always shipped on time. Having the backing of the branches working together really opens up Har-tung to large commercial and specialty projects anywhere.”“It was a lot of work and at times there were a lot of challenges but when you look at the size and the scope of it, the number of problems were very small,” said Butler. “With countersunk holes, the lites could only layup one way. Other projects you can flip them around however with countersinks, it made it that much more important to make sure we got it right the first time.”

*Photos courtesy of Joel Berman Glass Studios