Engineered Glass Projects

Keywords 1 = glass 2 = engineering 3 = design 4 = project

Abstract
Designing and engineering with glass is still a poorly understood area of expertise amongst most architects and engineers. What type of glass, how to design and detail it and then how to get contractors and suppliers to make it for you is still a big problem which is why we have so much of our work in trouble-shooting and problem fixing. This paper will examine some aspects of glass design and engineering, it will illustrate it with some project case studies, and go on to show that only by bringing the right expertise at the design phase can problems be avoided.

Aesthetics and Structural Considerations

Glass has been the number one material in the past 30 or more years for design and architectural expression. There have been some notable examples of sheer architectural delight and some passing fads. In most cases glass is being used as a cladding material mechanically retained or bonded (structural silicone glazing) to a frame. The advent of structural (or bolted frame-less) glazing in the early 1980s opened up new horizons for architecture. Toughened glass is a good engineering material and has revolutionised architecture. Exploiting the potential of toughened, and more importantly, toughened laminated glass is just beginning to happen as designers (architects and engineers) begin to appreciate its possibilities. Toughened laminated glass has also made possible some examples of what I loosely term glass nerds, or in other words the use of glass in an inefficient way which usually results in flawed aesthetic, high cost, difficult maintenance and replacement procedures and poor durability. Amongst the most elegant uses of glass around is the hand painted glass tent at the British Diplomatic Club in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Other examples include the gable wall facades of the Kempensky Hotel at Munich Airport and the facades of the Western Morning News in Plymouth. The simplicity and sheer clarity of the gable wall facades at Thames Valley University in Slough and the Glass Bell Tower facades at Basildon are hard to ignore as classically beautiful architecture.

Introduction
Architectures fascination with glass started more than 1000 years ago. The craft of glass making has been refined incrementally over the centuries. The modern glass revolution took place in the early nineteen sixties when Pilkington perfected and patented the float process. Since then a generation of architects and engineers has grown up almost taking plate glass for granted and expecting it to do things that glass perhaps, was never intended to do. In examining glass use in a contemporary context we need to deal with various aspects of its appearance, function and performance. We also need to relate it to its environmental impact in terms of embodied energy, its energy performance over a typical design life in buildings and its recycle-ability. The sustainable lobby is gaining stronger emphasis and is gradually moving to occupy centre stage on designers agendas alongside appearance and performance.

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Mr. Stephen Tanno BSc CEng MICE MIEAust Group Director Buro Happold Faade Engineering

The new range of glass bending and laminating equipment is making possible new products previously thought of as novel, expensive or of poor quality. Single curvature glass ovens that bend and toughen the glass at the same time are capable of producing high optical clarity material with consistency and little distortion. Even double curvature is viable, though more expensive. Laminating glass with various materials in the laminate sandwich is also becoming more common. For example the Money Zone at the Millennium Dome with one million pounds in legal tender fiftypound notes laminated into the glass that makes up the facades and walls of the zone. Other laminates have incorporated dried tree leaves, stainless steel meshes, and glass has been successfully laminated with exceptionally thin natural stone such as marble to create translucent cladding.

The Sustainability of Glass

Glass in buildings more than 1000 years old is still in use, which proves that glass as a simple monolithic material has infinite life. However, modern double glazing units will last anything from 10-30 years with 20 years being the average durability. This is largely due to the break-down of the edge seals in double glazing units. Conventional double glazing appears to makes little sense from the sustainability angle, especially when embodied energy is taken into the equation. Additionally, the poor recycle-ability of plate glass into new plate glass makes the situation worse. Glass has very high embodied energy and its production uses natural resources that may not be readily renewable. The sealed air-conditioned box building with conventional double glazing is unlikely to survive if stiff regulation comes into effect enforcing sustainable construction. To that end low energy design is likely to focus on the possibilities of layered systems incorporating monolithic glass for longer life with a carefully designed cavity to give better thermal insulation and solar control as well as better fire and acoustic performance.

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Thermal and Solar

The race is on amongst the glass producers and processors to convince architects that their product is the best and is better than their competitors. The demand in Europe and North America is for high visible light transmittance nontinted glass with low energy transmittance. The search for the perfect wonder product remains elusive despite the serious advances in vapour deposition coatings using exotic metals such as silver, titanium and gold. The perceived problems with many of these products are: Coatings can be unstable over time giving a patch appearance Cost and very limited supply sources means that they beyond the affordability of most projects Lead-times for initial supply, ad-hoc breakage replacement and long term replacement may be problems. For instance exact matching a product that is no longer produced can be a serious problem. It is therefore more often than not that owners and managers of buildings prefer to stick with an off-the-shelf product. The modern all glass building actually makes little sense from an environmental control and sustainability angle unless adequate shading and thermal provisions are made in the design. The question why glaze needs to be asked more frequently. With products such as inert gas filled double glazed units, the glass producers are trying to make a stronger case for glass everywhere. However, there is doubt as to how the edge seal will ensure that all the gas has not dispersed through the edge and then the thermal insulation is back to a conventional units performance. The concept being, if form follows function, then one has to carefully look at the question why glaze and how to glaze?

Case Studies
Four case studies are presented that had different design criteria attached to them. Almost on every project, the architects driving vision is to achieve a specific aesthetic. We believe this to be just as important a driver as any of the functional criteria. The engineers role is to resolve the functional aspects in a creative synthesis with the aesthetic. Thames Valley Universitys Learning Resources Centre at Slough, England is a case in point. Here the architect (Rrichard Rogers Partnership) wanted to create as elegant as possible a faade with minimal sight-lines on the main entrance facades. At the same time there were significant budget constraints. Conventional wisdom would have said a point fixed faade on some form of tension cable structure. However, budget did not permit. Architect and engineer had to think outside the box and look at ways in which structure and cladding could be merged to help each other in order to create something special at an affordable price. The net result was a faade braced structure using standard components. The writer has seen and been involved in projects costing 3-4 times more yet failing the achieve the same level of refined classic simplicity. The same integrated design method of working was applied to a Bell Tower for a church in Basildon, UK. Here the whole structure and its

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contents is a show-piece. Totally transparent glass and steel structure housing a full peel of eight bells (four of them historic dating to the fifteenth centure). A integrated structure and glazing system with fibre optic lighting woven through the fabric of the building envelope, was evolved by Buro Happold working as lead consultant with Fletcher Priest Architects. Another project that the writer was involved with that was quite a considerable challenge primarily due to geometry is the Cellular Operations building in Swindon, UK. Here a glass torpedo was to be created using point fixed double glazing. Finally a simple faade using cantilevered vertical glass fins sandwiched inside split-mullions to support horizontal aluminium shading elements. Again this is a project with a limited budget that required careful and efficient design to realise the

end product at the budget target. Working with a Polish architect and an Italian system house Buro Happold was able to help in completing this project on time and to budget.

Conclusions
Glass engineering can make a real difference to both clients and owners who develop and maintain buildings for a long period of time, and to contractors and suppliers of glass systems. Good glass engineering takes the aspirations of architects and aesthetic designers and turns them into build-able components that make the best use of what suppliers have to offer. The end result if the engineering is good will be something that makes the most efficient use of materials and create stunningly elegant glass buildings.
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