Circle Redmont’s Solar White glass block and metal panel system was featured on a home improvement episode of the syndicated show, Bob Vila. In the episode, Bob Vila integrates Solar White flooring into an older New England Victorian home remodeling project. For the Victorian Makeover Project project, SolarWhite Panels™ were designed into the master bed/bath area providing a custom glass accent flooring area while recycling the natural daylight into the lower level. Additional SolarWhite Panels™ were installed in the second and first floors perpendicular to each other, brightening the interior halls and bringing natural light into the basement. The video as well as an article can be viewed here.

Excerpts from the script are below:

BV: “Mary Lou pace is here from Circle Redmont which is the company that manufactures the glass block floors that we’re putting in here now. This is not a product I’ve ever used before in the kind of a New England residential remodeling projects. And I think is really neat because architecturally it really brings that feeling of bringing the new into the old problem. But, I’d be afraid of breaking this.”

CR: “You know we don’t have to be afraid of breaking this. It actually is a extruded aluminum framework and it’s completely structural. What this product is incorporating is actually hollow glass block.”

BV: “If you drop something on the glass blocks, it won’t shatter?”

CR: “No. In residential applications this product is perfect. Typically flooring is to maybe forty pounds per square or twenty pounds per square but this glass is calced at something much higher sixty pounds.”

BV: “That is a tempered glass block as well?”

CR: “No actually the hollow glass blocks are actually a new class of annealed glass – very strong, double sided, double faced.”

BV: “So your company creates these monolithic panels and it’s always custom right depending on what the architect specified. We’ve got three of them here. Well two of them are going in this area then one right here. In the landing on the second floor and then another one in the landing on the third floor and it works with a skylight that we have a there’s so that we should theoretically get daylight all the way down to here.”

BV: “Let’s flip the panel up. This side is frosted.”

CR: “Yes. What we do is we actually do a sandblasted finish and the reason why we do that because for foot resistance.”

BV: “Oh beautiful, let’s see it from the second floor. Boy, that really looks beautiful out here. The unusual balcony well I can step on it. Circle Redmont makes these floor systems.”

The old City Hall in Melbourne, Florida, was being rebuilt into a new architectural landmark befitting this thriving, technology and aerospace enriched, coastal community. Circle Redmont was chosen to create the interior focal point of the 58,279-square-foot building.

The design was to build an inlaid glass floor of Melbourne’s city seal to greet visitors in the lobby. Circle Redmont fashioned the seal, as well as glass panels in the floor of each level, adding a huge “wow” factor to the building.

“This building is definitely our centerpiece,” Certified General Vice President and senior project manager James Grisham said. “We’re very proud of it. Very proud.”

Tile floors and Mediterranean-inspired colors line the public hallways on each of the five floors— save the unfinished fourth floor.

The Millennium Park Fountain, a gift to the people of the City of Chicago by the Crown Family, is an interactive masterpiece designed by Spanish artist, Jaume Plensa. The integration of new, untested material and LED technology into a monument, which is to last decades, presented unprecedented aesthetic, technical, material and fabrication challenges.

When the Crown family commissioned Spanish artist Juame Plensa to design a monument for Chicago, the palette he used consisted of water, light, color, technology, interactivity, expansive size, imagery and glass. His final concept took on the shape of two massive, monolithic fountains with cascading water and LED video images projecting through solid glass brick walls. All of these elements presented unique challenges, especially Juame’s vision of colossal, continuous glass brick walls.

After months and months, world-renowned teams of engineers working with fabricators failed to come up with a successful design solution. Just when it seemed Juame’s concept would have to be abandoned, [the developers] learned of Circle Redmont® and brought its experienced teams on board to rekindle the concept.

The challenge of the project is to structure each of the 50’ high towers without blocking or penetrating the LED wall directly behind the glass bricks. The walls of the towers are made of custom 5” x 10” x 2” glass bricks secured into a 1” x 1/8” stainless steel grid. The “water white” glass bricks are produced by hand-pouring molten glass into cast iron molds by a 100-year-old glass foundry in Pennsylvania.

The top of the tower is designed to incorporate a concealed trough regulating the flow of water down the face of the glass bricks. The water trough, roof and LED are all supported by structural frames, which are independent of the glass brick skin allowing for expansion and contraction of the tower. The apparent simplicity of this structure allows the water and the projected faces to be the focus of the fountain. Circle Redmont proved it could successfully design, engineer and manufacture the two 52’ high by 25’ wide glass brick structures. Prefabricated glass brick wall panels were built at Circle Redmont’s facility and then erected at the job site under Circle Redmont supervision. All materials, including the glass blocks, were manufactured in the United States.

As a dramatic centerpiece to the park, the two towers appear as simple, translucent, glass brick forms that glow with internal light on three sides, while on the fourth large LED images of faces portray Chicagoans of all ages, and backgrounds.

Today, the Millennium Fountain Towers in Chicago stand as a staggering example of American ingenuity and engineering. They were built to last so they can be enjoyed by millions of visitors to Millennium Park for many years to come.