AGC Asahi Glass (AGC) made its third appearance in three years at Milan Design Week, one of the world’s largest design festivals, held in Italy in April. The theme this year was “Touch.” Based on the concept “the feel of glass,” AGC exhibited works created with its advanced glass processing technology and the ideas of its creative partners.
     Glass has always been a familiar part of our daily lives. In our homes, our cars, on high-rise buildings in our city, we are surrounded by countless types of glass used to create partitions and for protection. And with the advance of smartphones, we spend an increasing amount of time touching glass screens on our devices. Through the development of technologies such as anti-fingerprint coatings and glass strengthening, AGC has been able to adapt this material to meet our evolving needs.
     With the focus on the act of “touching” glass, AGC created several glass structures for the exhibition designed to lead visitors to a completely new glass experience. These works explored new aspects of glass production, including nano-unit fine textures and unique methods of expression, in the hope they would inspire a new approach toward glass and open the door to exciting possibilities for this versatile material in our everyday lives. Visitors were encouraged to touch the glass surfaces and enjoy moving, tapping and drawing on them.
     AGC was happy to welcome new creative partners: Jin Kuramoto, who produces designs that express the essence of things in an easy-to-understand manner; and the design studio Raw-Edges based in London that is known for its humorous world-view and works which feature many colors and discernable movement. At Milan Design Week, AGC’s glass structures showed how glass has advanced as a material and proposed new uses and creative possibilities for it to designers in the fields of architecture, interior design, product design and spatial presentation.