Like Joel Berman Studio’s Salt and Archdeco’s Sumiglass Series, Guardian Glass manufactures a variety of decorative glass products for building interiors and exteriors, though neither of the former can boast origins in the automotive industry. But what else should we expect from a company based in Auburn Hills, MI, the state that lives and dies with cars?

Light Blue 63 (#2) at the Akron Art Museum, Ohio. Manufactured by Guardian Industries.

With a storied history of local job generation dating back to 1932, Guardian began as a producer of auto windshields, and in 1970 they debuted their signature float glass, “a product achieved by floating molten glass on a bath of liquid tin.” Some 40 years hence they’ve parlayed this technology into 21 fabrication plants and 23 lines of float glass products, including the impressive and eco-wise SunGuard Series of Advanced Architectural Glass.

Sunguard Neutral 40 #2 used in the Bilbao Department of Health, Spain. Manufactured by Guardian Industries.

Neutral 40 #2 used in the Bilbao Department of Health, Spain. Manufactured by Guardian Industries.

Neutral 40 #2 used in the Bilbao Department of Health, Spain. Manufactured by Guardian Industries.

Branded as the intersection of “cutting-edge technology and striking statements of light and color,” SunGuard is grouped into three series, each of which manipulates solar transmission to a targeted result: “Super Neutral” delivers high light transmission while minimizing heat gain; “High Performance” presents a greater variety of finishes (any desired tint from “light blue on clear” to “royal blue on green”); and “Solar” offers high reflectivity and an extremely low co-efficient of solar gain. Perhaps one useful way to distinguish between the three is to think of them as a “continuum of translucence,” with Super Neutral allowing the most light in and Solar blocking a substantial amount out.

Several international and domestic projects have featured SunGuard, not the least of which is the curiously cantilevered and strangely sloping contours of the Akron Art Museum, outfitted in Guardian’s SunGuard High Performance Light Blue 63 with Clear Outboard Float Glass; or Spain’s Gaudi-esque Bilbao Department of Health, whose facade of intersecting polyhedrons is made all the more sinister and fanciful for the high reflectivity of SunGuard’s Neutral 40 #2 with clear inboard and outboard substrates. I could go on but I think the point is made: Guardian’s SunGuard line represents a dawn in the science (and art) of energy efficiency in architectural glass.