Glass films pasted from inside for Aapulki Eye Care, with no scaffolding

The brief

Aapulki Eye Care’s glass front is a floor above a row of shops, too high to reach from the street. Every vendor the clinic asked before us gave the same answer: put up scaffolding or bring in a crane and paste the films from outside. The scaffolding would have cost more than the films, it would have blocked the shops below while it stood, and it would have to come back every time the clinic changed its prints.

What we made

We suggested reverse-pasteable glass films. The image is printed so that the glue sits on its printed face, like a sticker on the inside of a car windscreen. Our fitters worked from inside the clinic and pasted each film on the glass with the image facing the street. No access from outside was needed, and none will be when the prints change.

The middle and right-hand panels are on printed frosted film. Daylight still fills the rooms, but people on the street can’t see in, which matters in a clinic where patients are being examined.

The first panel, where the doctor sits, needed something different: branding on the glass, but a clear view of the street. We printed a layer of white ink under the colour, which makes the printed area opaque, and left the eye unprinted. The eye stays clear glass, so she can see out, while the rest of the panel carries the clinic’s colours.

Each 10 ft panel is made of three sheets of glass, so every print was split into three tiles that meet exactly at the glass joints. The lines of the facade stay clean.

The clinic’s lit signboard above the glass was made by another vendor; our work on this facade is the glass films.