A jeweller’s storefront has to do two jobs at once: put the stock on show and keep it safe. At Braehead, both jobs are done by a sweep of curved structural glass.
We have worked with Beaverbrooks for around twenty years, across multiple contractors and successive generations of their stores. That is what repeat business looks like in retail glazing: the client changes shopfitter, the standard does not, and AGS keeps getting the call.
At Braehead in Glasgow, working with shopfit contractor Barbour, we supplied and installed a floor-to-ceiling frameless glass storefront with a curved glass entrance line, plus the internal display screens that put the jewellery on show while keeping it secure.
What we supplied and installed
Every pane on this job is doing security work as well as display work. The specification below is what that takes.
Curved glass at 350kg a panel
Curved structural glass is heavy, expensive and completely unforgiving of poor measurement. Each curved panel here weighs around 350kg, and every one had to be surveyed, made and set out so the curve reads as one continuous line of glass. We installed them using mini-cranes and glazing robots, working inside the unit without removing the hoarding, which kept the mall trading around us and the cost of the fit-out under control.
Display glazing that earns its keep
Behind the storefront, the window bed screens are their own piece of engineering. The display doors are 13.5mm toughened and laminated glass, hung on glass-to-glass butt hinges so there is no framing to interrupt the view, and secured with Salto electronic locks. Staff get clean access to the displays; everyone else gets 21.5mm of laminated glass between them and the stock.
The detail others miss
A shopping centre moves. The structure above a shopfront deflects, and if nobody has planned for that, the movement ends up in the glass. This storefront was detailed with a 20mm vertical deflection allowance inside the top glazing channel, so the building can do what buildings do without ever loading the glazing. It is the kind of detail nobody sees, which is exactly the point.
Retail glazing is unforgiving. The stock is high value, the mall keeps trading, and the storefront is the security line. That is why it teaches you quickly.
Working inside a live shopping centre
Nothing on this job could disrupt the centre around it. The hoarding stayed up while the glass went in, so every panel, including the 350kg curves, was brought in and set using mini-cranes and glazing robots inside the unit. That is a planning job as much as a lifting job: access routes, equipment, protection and sequence all agreed before the first pane moved.
Our reputation has been built on repeat business, not sales talk.
AGS Architectural Glass Systems
The result
A storefront that does everything a jeweller needs it to do: a continuous curve of frameless glass that puts the stock on show, laminated security glazing and electronically locked display screens that keep it safe, and a fit-out delivered without stopping the mall around it. Twenty years into the relationship, Beaverbrooks keep asking AGS back. In retail glazing, that is the only reference that matters.
See more of our retail and commercial glazing work.
