Heavyweight champ: Orama Minimal Frames

Brand story by Emma Moore
Loutraki, Grèce
23.02.21

Minimal in profile, ORAMA MINIMAL FRAMES’ high-tech aluminium frames mean an architectural lightness of touch. But don’t be fooled. Their high load-bearing capacity brings the engineering smarts.

Orama provided the frames for the glass walls of this Arplus-designed pool house in Wortegem in Belgium which was completed in 2020

The art of making windows doesn’t always get the attention it perhaps deserves. But large-scale windows and glass doors are playing a significant role in modern architecture, and it is only set to grow with our need to connect our interiors more fully with the great outdoors and nature.

‘Climate change and the call for environmental sensibility makes windows the most important and demanding parts of a building,’ says George Tsimpikos, founder of the greek company Orama Minimal Frames. ‘Concurrently, contemporary architecture requires more and more open, large and luminous spaces, bringing humans and nature closer to each other than ever.’

Orama’s designers, engineers and researchers work closely with architects and can adapt and customise their frames to the needs of specific projects. This shows frames being painted

Tsimpikos launched Orama Minimal Frames in 2014 to meet this demand by making glass window and door panels with all the architectural integrity required by the world’s most exacting architects, developers and private grand designers. It was formed from the merger of a window dealership and a major aluminium extrusion business, Exalco, and amalgamated some of the finest designers, engineers, researchers, manufacturers and architectural expertise in the field.

Orama is now an industry leader, designing, manufacturing and installing high-tech, minimal, aluminium frames globally. Not only do its systems satisfy a building designer’s call for minimal intrusion aesthetically, they also perform exceptionally for the engineers, with strong weight-bearing properties, and for the end-user, with easy-opening functionality and energy efficiency in-built.

Formed by the merger of a window exporter and an aluminium extrusion business, Orama manufactures frames that enable minimal visual interruptions in walls of glass

Orama bends its know-how around challenges set by top-ranking architects, finding solutions to unprecedented plans and layouts. They have collaborated with Frank Gehry, Alvaro Siza, and KPF and a global network of distributors and technicians has allowed the portfolio of buildings that they grace to number residences and resorts in Malibu, the Seychelles, the Hamptons, Knokke in Belgium, Dubai, Bali and Greece’s Peloponnesus, and many other sought-after locations where the outside earns its place inside.