Switchable Privacy Glass for Toronto Office

The Berkley Group, Toronto · PriWatt switchable glass

A glass office that can hold a private meeting

The Berkley Group invests in and develops property, and works out of the kind of office it builds: open, contemporary, glazed. That leaves one question unanswered: where the conversation goes when it should not be watched.

Privacy without putting anything up

PriWatt glass gives a room its privacy on demand: clear while the meeting is ordinary, opaque the moment it is not. It suits a fit-out and a refurbishment equally, because the privacy is in the panel and not in something hung in front of it: a conference room, a meeting room, a partition between two teams, a window onto a corridor.

Doors at the Berkley Group office, one clear and one switched to privacy

What it replaces, and what that is worth

Blinds and curtains, which in a shared office are the surfaces that need cleaning
An opaque state that is still glass: wiped down like the rest of the partition
Glare control without a fabric layer in front of the window
UV and infrared held back by the glass itself

The panels are also rated for sound at Rw 35–36 dB, the difference between a glazed meeting room that looks private and one that is.

A meeting room at the Berkley Group office in Toronto

The wall as a screen

In its opaque state the same panel is a writable surface and a rear-projection screen. The material polarises light, and that lifts contrast and brightness enough to project from behind the glass in daylight with moderate ambient light, so a meeting room does not need a whiteboard on one wall and a screen on another.