Spread across 100+ acres in the Willowbrook neighborhood of Los Angeles County, Calif., the Earvin “Magic” Johnson Recreation Area, named after the basketball Hall of Famer and Los Angeles Lakers legend, is a go-to area for outdoor activities, gatherings and festivals.

A revamp of the park was completed in late 2020, and this transformation included the addition of 30,000 plants and 300 trees, a redesigned lake and a half-mile walking trail. The core of the revamp was the construction of a 20,000 square foot community center built along the southwest perimeter of the lake.

The architect, Paul Murdoch Architects, was seeking openness for the updated facility to ensure those partaking in gatherings, conferences and educational courses inside the building would have a clear view of the lake and open space outside, and those outside would have a better glimpse of the activities occurring inside the building. To provide the most transparency and natural daylight for the community center, Paul Murdoch Architects chose Solarban^® 70 glass (formerly Solarban^® 70XL glass) from Vitro Architectural Glass (formerly PPG Glass).

Paul Murdoch Architects also specified Solarban^® 70 glass because it offers excellent energy efficiency without making the glass dark or reducing the visible light transmittance (VLT). In a one-inch insulating glass unit (IGU), Solarban^® 70 glass provides a VLT of 64% and a solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) of 0.27, which surpasses the performance of any other solar control low‑e glass on the market today and is why it has become the most specified triple-silver-coated low‑e glass in the industry.

Glass fabricator Trulite Glass & Aluminum – City Of Industry and glazing contractor Harris Glass Company provided the Solarban^® 70 glass for the community center. General contractor S J Amoroso Construction Co Inc handled installation.

For more information about Solarban^® 70 glass and the rest of Vitro Glass’s full line of architectural glasses, visit www.vitroglazings.com or call 1-855-VTRO-GLS (887-6457).

Vitro Glass, part of Vitro, S.A.B. de C.V. (BMV:VITROA), the largest company of its kind in the Americas, manufactures a range of industry-leading, energy-efficient products such as Solarban^®, Sungate^® and Starphire Ultra-Clear^® glasses at U.S. plants in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; Fresno, California; Salem, Oregon; and Wichita Falls, Texas. Committed to sustainable manufacturing processes and products, the company also operates one of the world’s largest glass research and development facilities in Pittsburgh and four residential glass fabrication plants in Canada. In celebration of the International Year of Glass in 2022, Vitro upholds the values of “Together, We See Further” across the architectural, automotive and containers markets and strives to realize the power of partnership to ensure that projects meet or exceed ever-evolving sustainability expectations as well as glass requirements. For more information, please visit www.VitroGlass.com.

Solarban^® is a registered trademark owned by Vitro. LEED^® — an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design — is a registered trademark of the U.S. Green Building Council.

*Featured Image Courtesy: Jim Cunningham