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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 – National Library of Belarus

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Iconic Glass Structures – National Library of Belarus

Iconic Glass Structures – National Library of Belarus

In our ongoing series that looks at iconic glass structures, today we’ll look at the National Library of Belarus. The library was originally opened in 1922 and houses the country’s largest collection of printed materials. It’s also home to the world’s third largest collection of Russian language books.

The current building was opened in January 2006 and features 22 floors. The building holds about 2,000 visitors, as well as a 500-seat conference theater. According to the library, the building welcomes about 2,200 visitors each day. The building’s design features an unusual complex polyhedron known as a rhombicuboctahedron, which consists of 18 squares and 8 triangles perched on a stylobate. Read more

Iconic Glass Structures – The Bloch Building

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We would be remiss if we didn’t include the Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in our growing list of iconic glass structures. The Bloch Building, a 2007 addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, features a frosted glass exterior that when lit from inside, takes on the appearance of a Japanese lantern.

The building is a 165,000 square foot addition to the museum complex, and sits in stark contrast to the museum’s original Beaux-Arts style building, which opened in 1933. The Bloch Building, named after H & R Block co-founder Henry W. Bloch, is home to a number of the museum’s collections, including contemporary art and African, photography. It also includes a number of galleries for special exhibits, a reference library and a permanent sculpture collection. Read more

Dangerous winds cause glass loss in NYC

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Dangerous winds cause glass loss in NYC

Dangerous winds cause glass loss in NYC

Heavy wind gusts in New York City forced city officials to issue warnings and close sidewalks as glass panels rained downs on certain parts of the city. The wind gusts, which reached 60 mph at times, were part of a storm system that moved through the Midwest and Northeast over the weekend and on Monday. Read more

Iconic Glass Structures – China Central Television Headquarters

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Iconic Glass Structures – China Central Television Headquarters

Iconic Glass Structures – China Central Television Headquarters

In our ongoing series on iconic glass structures, we’ll look at China Central Television Headquarters (CCTV) in Beijing. The CCTV Headquarters makes heavy use of glass, and was designed and built over a period of eight years, between 2004 and 2012. The building is actually three buildings that have been joined together, and reflects a desire to eschew the standard height-based evaluation of modern commercial architecture.

Construction on the tower was delayed by a massive fire that ripped through an adjacent structure in 2009. The fire caused extensive damage to the building under construction. The CCTV building was nearly complete at the time of the fire, and pushed back the building’s completion by about three years. Read more

Iconic Glass Structures – City Hall, London

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Iconic Glass Structures – City Hall, London

Iconic Glass Structures – City Hall, London

In today’s installment of our series looking at iconic glass structures, we take a look at City Hall in Southwark, England. City Hall is the home of the Greater London Authority, but is not technically in London, nor is it a true municipal building. Although the building houses the Office of the Mayor and the London Assembly, the building is privately owned.

City Hall sits on the south bank of the River Thames and was planned and constructed between 1998 and 2002. The building was designed by architect Norman Foster, who was heavily influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, Bauhaus architect Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe and Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier. Foster, who initially studied at the University of Manchester, completed his graduate work at Yale University. For a period of time, Foster also collaborated with Buckminster Fuller, the futuristic architect and designer of the geodesic dome. Like Fuller, Foster often worked to design novel housing models for low-income and urban dwellers. Foster was also known for his industrial and commercial building designs.

Construction on City Hall was completed at a cost of about $54 million. The building was constructed on land that had been used for wharves. GLA occupies the building on a long-term lease. It features an unusual bulbous shape that is designed to reduce energy consumption. Although the design employs a double glass façade, tests have shown that the building is not particularly energy efficient.

The building has a generally round shape at the base, meaning that it has no designated front or back side. The interior includes a helical walkway that ascends from the base to the top of the building. The swirling walkway is reminiscent of two other Norman Foster creations, the reconstructed Reichstag Dome in Berlin and 30 St. Mary Axe in London. The open design of the building is meant to convey the transparency and accessibility that modern democratic processes require.

The building contains 10 stories, and provides nearly 20,000 square meters of office and meeting space. The building includes an open-air viewing deck that is sometimes available to the public. Although the claims of the building’s energy efficient design have been questioned, City Hall uses only about one-quarter of the energy of a typical, similarly sized building in London.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. Glassprimer™ glass paint can be used in both interior and exterior applications and can help reduce solar heat gain in some applications. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Bill Smith, via Flickr.com

New “powerless” glass can cool buildings

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New "powerless" glass can cool buildings

New “powerless” glass can cool buildings

A team of researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder has developed a novel material that can cool buildings without consuming any power. The material, which is a thin film composed of silver and glass in a polymer known as polymethylpentene, can be produced less expensively than comparable films made from other materials.

The film works because the solar radiation passes through the polymer, but reflects off of the silver layer. The silver layer does not absorb the solar radiation. Instead, the glass reflects the heat, which is created by infrared waves, away from the glass.

The film has been tested under midday heat – the point at which the infrared waves are most intense – and it has performed very well. The new material can be produced quickly and efficiently, using a roll to roll process. The finished film is about as thick as a piece of aluminum foil, like the kind used in a kitchen.

The team will continue to test the material to determine its overall durability and longevity. The team will also experiment with a “cooling farm” in 2017. According to the University of Colorado researchers, 10 to 20 square meters of their material would keep an average sized home continuously cool during the summer. Having said that, they also caution that the film isn’t something that can simply be applied to a home’s roof and left in place, because while it will cool the home effectively in summer, it will also cool a home in the winter – an undesirable condition, especially for homes in the northern part of the country.

Researchers at Stanford University developed a similar film in 2014, but that composition used alternating layers of silicon dioxide and hafnium dioxide. This film is more expensive to produce, and hafnium dioxide is in limited supply. The University of Colorado Boulder team uses commonly available materials. Both materials have a surface temperature that’s less than the surrounding air temperature, even in midday heat.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. Glassprimer™ glass paint can be used in both interior and exterior applications and can help reduce solar heat gain in some applications. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: davebloggs007 , via Flickr.com

Could regulations spell the end of glass buildings?

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New glass coating can keep greenhouses cooler

New glass coating can keep greenhouses cooler

Regulations directed toward reducing energy consumption could spell an end to the glass buildings that have dominated the landscape architecture since the end of World War II. Glass façades are almost standard elements in building design today, but they don’t provide much cover when it comes to energy efficiency.

In addition to not being a great thermal insulator, glass façades often increase the amount of energy a building consumes in the summer, primarily by increasing the temperature inside the building. Increased internal temperatures mean increased use of air conditioning, and an increased load on power plants.

Proposed changes to Canada’s National Energy Code for Buildings that could take effect in 2017 could change the landscape for modern architecture. A new formula for calculating thermal bridging and a requirement for heat and energy recovery could mean that glass façades will no longer measure up for Canadian construction.

If adopted, the regulations wouldn’t actually prohibit the use of glass, but it would require more expensive glass in order to conform to the new rules. Commercial construction costs are always significant, so seeking less expensive or more readily conforming materials may lead to a change in building design.

Thermal bridging is at the center of one of the proposed changes. The term “thermal bridge” refers to areas of a building that have a much higher rate of heat transfer than materials around it. Without specialized coatings or formulations, glass has a limited ability to prevent the transfer of heat into or out of a building. Glass façades and windows are often the primary route for heat transfer. Under current rules, this heat transfer is calculated using a particular formula that many experts believe understates the amount of heat transfer due to glass.

The new regulations would require an extensive thermal analysis to identify and reduce heat transfer between the building envelope and the outside environment. Making a building compliant with new regulations could mean reducing the amount of glass and other low-quality insulators, and diminishing heat transfer as much as possible.
Other proposed changes to the code include regulations that would require minimum energy performance improvements for a building’s roof, windows and doors. The public comment period on the code changes closed on December 9, and the updated code is expected to be published sometime in 2017.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. Glassprimer™ glass paint can be used in both interior and exterior applications and can help reduce solar heat gain in some applications. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Government of Prince Edward Island, via Flickr.com

Iconic Glass Structures – Flame Towers

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Iconic Glass Structures – Flame Towers

Iconic Glass Structures – Flame Towers

When you think of iconic modern architecture, you don’t automatically think of Baku, Azerbaijan, but a steel and glass building complex known as the Flame Towers may just change that. Designed as a mixed-use office, residential and hotel complex, the Flame Towers tower over Azerbaijan’s capital city.

In Azerbaijan, historians have found evidence of human habitation that dates back 100,000 years. Roman inscriptions dating back to the first century AD have been found there. Azerbaijan has been a political crossroads throughout its history, and has intermittently been controlled by European, Asian, Soviet and Middle Eastern influences.

The discovery of rich oil reserves in Azerbaijan combined with the eventual fall of the Soviet Union left the country with a burgeoning economy and a desire to build. Construction on the Flame Towers began in 2007 and was completed in 2012. The buildings opened to tenants in 2013.

The complex consists of three curvaceous buildings, referred to as the South, North and West towers. The glass façades of each of the three buildings can be turned into massive display screens, thanks to more than 10,000 LED luminaires. The displays, which often take the visual appearance of fires or the Azerbaijan national flag, can be seen from any point in the city of Baku.

The three towers range in height from 161m to 182 meters. The tallest of the three towers, the South tower, is a 33-story residential facility. The North tower offers 30 stories of hotel space and the West tower, which is the smallest of the three buildings at 28 stories, is used for commercial office space. In its entirety, the complex contains more than 2.5 million square feet of usable space.

US-based Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum (HOK) designed the buildings. The buildings’ signature curves, which pay homage to the region’s historical worship of fire, are not just for aesthetics. Fierce winds blow through Baku, and the region is seismically active. The continuous curves of the buildings help them withstand the forces they encounter.

The glass used in the building façades is tinted both blue and orange, which allows the buildings to show a fire motif during daylight hours.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Firuza, via Flickr.com

Iconic Glass Structures – Langen Foundation

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Iconic Glass Structures – Langen Foundation

Iconic Glass Structures – Langen Foundation

The Langen Foundation is an art museum located in Berlin on the former NATO Hombroich-Neuss Missile Station. The Langen Foundation building is part of the larger Museum Insel Hombroich complex. It is made from reinforced concrete, steel and glass. The building’s design includes a double “skin” of glass and concrete.

First opened to the public in 2004, the Langen Foundation features two partially underground exhibition buildings housing three major exhibition spaces. The entire Langen Foundation Museum offers about 1,300 square meters of space, and its collection is focused on contemporary art.

The museum was designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando. The museum was built to house the art collection of Viktor and Marianne Langen. The collection consists of about 500 pieces of Japanese art, the bulk of which were created between the 12th and 19th centuries. Viktor Langen was an automotive engineer and held a number of patents. He regularly traveled to Japan, and that spurred his wife’s interest in Japanese art.

Initially, the couple’s collection was housed in Switzerland, but Marianne funded the construction of the Langen Foundation building to effect the relocation of her collection. She died shortly before construction of the building was finished. In addition to their collection of Japanese art, the couple also collected works from European artists, including Cezanne, Picasso, Warhol, Kandinsky and Bacon, among others.

Ando built the building as a sculptural work. The building includes a large glass and concrete rotunda, a concrete cube and a long glass and concrete veranda. The entire complex is designed to integrate into its surroundings and offers a peaceful venue that facilitates the contemplation of the museum’s collection.

Visitors to the complex enter a narrow doorway in a semicircular concrete and steel wall. Once through the doorway, the museum building, surrounded by a contemplative pool awaits. The glass envelope covers the interior concrete core.

The greater museum complex was rehabilitated following its initial construction as a NATO missile installation. The base was purchased by Karl-Heinrich Müller following its decommissioning in 1993. Müller did not want to erase the facility’s military history, but wanted to create a new purpose for the space. The finished design preserved military elements, including the bunkers, the observation tower, the halls and the landscaping that had disguised the military nature of the base. Other parts of the initial design, including razor-wire fencing, spotlights and bullet-proof glass were removed to open the space and make it more welcoming to the public. In addition to the Langen Foundation building, other new construction has also been completed on the base, and several sculptures now complement the grounds.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Andreas Lischka, via Flickr.com