Glass installation depicts Chicago landscape at O’Hare Terminal 5 expansion

As part of a $26 million renovation of the International Terminal 5 at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, design architect Epstein commissioned a decorative glass installation for a two-story interior curtain wall that serves as a partition separating secured and non-secured areas of the terminal.

Starphire Ultra-Clear glass panels fabricated by Goldray Industries line up against one another and create a continuous image that shows the gradual changes in color and texture that can be seen when heading inland from Lake Michigan to Chicago and on to Illinois’ rural cornfields. The panels were created with Dip-Tech digital printing technology, which uses a flat-bed printer to print high-resolution images on glass.

The panels depict lakes, shallow shores, city buildings, and farmland in a collage of rectangles and squares. The art was inspired by NASA satellite imagery. Transparent rectangles filter natural light from windows and skylights without diminishing the curtainwall’s privacy function.