Our project estimator, Tom Berger, arranged for an interesting presentation at our Giroux Glass offices today, from Nupress Façades. Here from Ontario, Canada, were Arthur Huard and Mark Korabo of Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada, to tell us about their company and its capabilities.
An international company based in Australia, and since 1972, Nupress is unusual in that they both design and manufacture, in their own facilities, structural glass façade systems and custom manufactured hardware. They feel that this offers their customers complete design freedom. Products intended for projects in North America are designed and manufactured in their 4-year old, state-of-the-art plant in Australia. When they create structural glass walls, they design and make all of their own hardware, with the exception of cables.
“We solve issues everyday, that’s what we do for a living,” says Art Huard. “We make everything from titanium parts to replace human bones, to airplane engine parts, to hardware for curtain walls.”
They showed us many dazzling examples of projects that they have designed and which use their components. Coincidentally, one of them was an amazing building in Chicago, Illinois, with the tallest glass wall they know of – 82 feet, laminated glass positioned inside an open-wall podium. That project was built by Clark Construction, and happened to have caught the eye of Monica Molinaro, our marketing assistant, when she recently played tourist and took the architectural boat tour a few months ago. She snapped this photo (right) of that impressive building then, having no clue at that time she would soon meet the people behind the wall system.
In addition to manufacturing, they make 3-D models, engineer, and produce drawings – to collaborate on final designs that result in their own custom casting and manufactured solutions. “About 70% of what we are asked to do can’t be built as envisioned — but we will design systems that will work, and that we’ll stand behind, Art explained.
Those of us present found the presentation interesting and informative. Tom Berger, Matt Lamb, Abdul Zoua, and Andy Gull attended from the Giroux Glass Commercial team; Robert Colon and Jess Carreon attended from the High-End Design team, and Monica Molinaro and I were happy to be there from Marketing. Thank you to Nupress for your time with us today!
