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Could China Be Moving Away From Glass Architecture

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Could China Be Moving Away From Glass Architecture

Could China Be Moving Away From Glass Architecture

Last month, the Chinese government issued a new edict regarding construction in the country: going forward, no “weird” architecture will be approved. “Weird” architecture includes landmark buildings like the China Central Television Headquarters. CCTV is a giant glass and steel structure that’s affectionately known as “Big Pants.”

In addition to putting the kibosh on eccentric construction, the State Council also eliminated gated communities and illegal structures on the mainland. According to the State Council, all urban architecture must be “suitable, economic, green and pleasing to the eye.” It called out buildings that are “oversized, xenocentric and weird” saying that they expressed a “lack of cultural confidence” and “distorted attitudes about political achievements.”

The State Council is trying to curb a growing trend in some cities to build impractical or bizarre buildings that don’t fulfill a public need, yet consume public resources. The impractical nature of some buildings inflate their operating costs and some buildings are torn down relatively soon after their completion.

The State Council also directed cities to identify and remove illegal structures in their jurisdictions within five years. Cities have also been directed to regulate the safety and quality of new building projects.

The directive doesn’t specifically call for an end to the use of glass in architecture, however traditional architectural glass may not meet the State Council’s “economic” requirement. Additional focus is being trained on coating technologies to improve the energy performance of glass.

Glassprimer™ glass paint could factor into strategies to make glass more energy efficient. Glassprimer™ glass paint can be used to control light and heat in a building. Its UV resistance means that the color of the paint will remain fresh and vibrant for years, even when exposed to direct sunlight. In addition to blocking out UV light, GlassPrimer™ glass paint can be used on a variety of interior decoration projects. If you’d like more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site.

Photo Credit: Bjarke Liboriussen, via Flickr

Iconic glass structures – Basque Health Dept

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Iconic glass structures - Basque Health Department Headquarters

Iconic glass structures – Basque Health Department Headquarters

What do you do when you need to expand a building in Bilbao, but you’re confronted with a patchwork quilt of building codes that restrict what you can do with the building’s design? You design a double-skinned glass and steel addition. The outside of the Basque Health Department in Bilbao shows an exterior that meets the local building code requirements, and an interior that meets the needs of the building’s occupants.

Glass and steel construction offers energy efficiency

The quirky building extension, which is required to have setbacks, walls that conform to those of neighboring buildings, and a tower, was designed by Coll-Barreu Arquitectos and has quickly become a landmark structure. The original building was designed in 1862, and the original structure – along with its neighbors – was designed in the style of that time. The addition was proposed in 2003 – 2004 and construction began in December 2004. The project was completed in February 2008.

The double-façade approach comes with additional benefits beyond simply meeting local design requirements. The glass and steel façade significantly reduces street noise in the building, because the double skin acts as a sound insulator. It also improves the building’s fire safety and reduces solar heat gain in the working interior of the building, making the addition highly energy efficient. The seven-story addition sits atop a three-level underground parking lot.

The outer façade of the building has a folded, almost random appearance, and is made of glass and tubular steel. The exterior skin isn’t tightly sealed, which allows the space between the inner and outer façades to “breathe.” The angled exterior glass controls the ability of UV-radiation to penetrate the interior façade, which reduces the amount of heat that accumulates in the working structure during the day. The building also features a two-story glass atrium and a roof deck, both of which are used for meetings and events.

The exterior façade uses laminated glass made of three distinct layers – glass, a layer of PVB, and a layer of low-e SunGuard glass by Guardian Industries. The interior façade features double-paned windows made of float glass and low-e laminated Neutralite glass, also made by Guardian Industries.

The Basque Health Department features one interesting way to design with glass. You can also bring glass into your own living and working space. Glassprimer™ glass paint creates a wide variety of opportunities to put glass to work as a decorating surface in both residential and commercial settings. If you’re looking for glass inspiration, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Wojtek Gurak, via FreeImages.com

Iconic Glass Structures – KAIT Workshop

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Iconic Glass Structures – KIT Workshop

Iconic Glass Structures – KIT Workshop

When Japanese architect Junya Ishigami set out to design a news space at the Kanagawa Institute of Technology, he wanted a design that was inspired by nature. What he came up with is an open plan building that’s about 2,000 square meters in area. The glass and steel KAIT Workshop contains no interior walls, and the roof is supported quite literally by a forest of supports.

Glass blurs the boundaries of the space

The 305 supports, which are all unique in size and angle, evoke a forest, which is exactly what Ishigami was going for. The school wanted to build a space that students and the public could use to work on individual projects. Because the space was not intended for any specific purpose, its interior needed to be highly flexible, and able to be transformed rapidly, based on the users’ immediate needs.

The final design of the building was inspired by the ambiguity found in natural forests. Upon close inspection, forests are not uniform arrangements of trees, but instead feature random, self-initiated placements of trees of all sizes and shapes. Open spaces combine with tightly clustered growth to form what appears to be a single, definable unit. The borders between open and closed spaces in the forest is ambiguous, at best. This is what Ishigami was aiming for in the building’s design.

The structure of the building is steel, and the outside walls are made of glass. The building was not designed with earthquake resistance in mind. The building is built on a concrete-and-bituminous foundation. The glass walls use the visually striking foundation to blur the distinction between interior and exterior space. The roof combines steel and glass to admit as much natural light as possible.

The interior of the building is stocked with chairs, tables and workspaces, which students can use and reconfigure as needed. The interior design of the building is meant to challenge the distinction between the building’s “local” spaces and its universal space.

If you’re looking for inspiration for a glass decorating project, please check out the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Maurizio Muccicola, via Flickr.com