Story at a glance:
- Kingspan Light + Air’s Architectural Solutions Team works with architects to choose the right daylighting solutions.
- The team collaborates on everything from detailing to specifications to keep as close to original design intent.
- Projects showcase the team’s capabilities to take projects from concept to reality.
Selecting the right products for a new building is a crucial part of the design process. With so many options available, making the right decision is more important than ever. With its Architectural Solutions Team, Kingspan Light + Air is looking to make the decision-making process easier for architects and specifiers when it comes to choosing the right daylighting, ventilation, and smoke management solutions.
Kingspan Light + Air, including its recent addition of Solatube International, offers a full range of standard and custom daylighting solutions, including translucent wall and roof assemblies, tubular daylighting devices, canopies, walkways, commercial unit skylights, and smoke vents. All products are engineered to optimize natural light and air in energy-efficient buildings.
The Architectural Solutions Team is made up of full-service project consultants who can guide architects to the right products for their projects. “We have assembled this incredibly talented group of architectural and design experts who can work with the design community to educate them to make informed decisions,” says Neall Digert, vice president of innovation and market development for Kingspan Light + Air.
Solutions Provider
The Architectural Solutions Team helped the Indianapolis Zoo achieve an open-air special events facility with protection from the weather. Photo courtesy of Kingspan Light + Air
The Architectural Solutions Team provides a personalized client experience by helping architects and designers understand the various daylighting solutions available and how they are best situated for each project. Team members guide architects through the decision-making process by educating them on the nuances of the different fenestration typologies.
“The team is tasked with not selling a widget, but delivering an end result that the building occupants will love and cherish,” Digert says. “We want the process and the resource we bring to the table to be the underlying substantial benefit to the customer and the end user.”
Team members provide daylighting product education, integrated design solutions, and full-service support from project start to finish. Services include daylight modeling, system performance analysis, specification writing and development, structural reviews, and compliance and testing documentation.
Working with the Architectural Solutions Team provides direct contact with an architectural and design expert who has access to virtually any type of fenestration product that a project could need. This allows the architect, designer, or building owner to come up with the best solution given the design intent, project budget, and the building’s occupants.
In addition to helping guide the architect to the right solution for their project, the team also looks at the long-term impact of the building. “Being able to curate this balanced, luminous environment by properly selecting, orienting, and specifying all of the various fenestration systems and how they interact with the opaque architecture of a building is so important to ensure we have a space that has consistent performance over the building’s life,” Digert says.
Strategic Specialists
The Architectural Solutions Team, currently made up of nine people, is strategically spread throughout the country in top design markets. Each member has a specific skill set with a unique point of view, experience, and expertise within the fenestration industry.
Team members are becoming specialists and subject matter experts in different areas, too, like sustainability and code requirements. “We’re really zeroing in on what team members are passionate about and are bringing that across the team as well,” says Miya Russell, director of the Architectural Solutions Team.
By building this team’s strengths across the board, Digert says they work as a collective. “You have this very diverse set of minds who are energized and innovative, allowing them to bounce ideas off of one another and solve the problems at hand for a specific architect or project. It is really powerful.”
At a time when many of today’s architects rely on Google to do research and gather information, Russell highlights the power of having a real person you can talk to and ask questions. “Through a couple of questions we ask in our consultative sales approach, we can open up opportunities to educate you on other solutions that could benefit your project,” she says.
“We want the architect to truly make informed decisions in the overall trajectory of design,” Digert adds.
From Concept to Reality
Plentiful light fills the Grandview Heights Aquatic Center in Surrey, British Columbia. Photo courtesy of Kingspan Light + Air
The Architectural Solutions Team collaborates with architects to ensure their projects are custom-designed and tailored to the original design intent.
When the owner and architect of the Grandview Heights Aquatic Center in Surrey, British Columbia wanted to bring daylight into a space that televised diving competitions, Kingspan Light + Air created a daylighting model to help predict the quality and quantity of light that would come into the space. This allowed them to develop a balance of translucent and transparent glazing systems and provide the right amount of light to film the competitions. Because of the tall spans in the space, the teams worked together to detail and specify the system, including the structural considerations to accommodate 55-foot-tall panels, leading to the project’s success.
Elsewhere, the Indianapolis Zoo sought a solution for their new open-air special events facility, which also needed to offer protection from the weather. Modeled after a lush rainforest, the Bicentennial Pavilion and Promenade is made primarily from natural materials. Working with the architects, Kingspan recommended using its U-Lite™ canopy system to help create 11 tree-like pods that provide cover for up to 1,000 seated attendees, while also reflecting the zoo’s mission of sustainability. The lightweight polycarbonate material doesn’t require a lot of support structure, which worked well with the glulam beams that made up the canopy structures.
The design team behind Willard Middle School in Virginia turned to Kingspan to create a beacon of light for entry into their school. Starting with the project rendering, the Kingspan team collaborated with the architect to create a tower for the space by using Kingspan Light + Air’s UniQuad® system. By adding lights to the tower, it became an illumination point for the school entrance. Additionally, the translucent polycarbonate panels of the UniQuad system are designed to coordinate with a variety of other facade materials, including transparent glazing, cladding, brick, and insulated metal panels.
