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Iconic glass structures – La Estancia Chapel

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Iconic glass structures - La Estancia Chapel

Iconic glass structures – La Estancia Chapel

The La Estancia Chapel in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico is a unique glass structure that was commissioned and built in 2008. The structure was designed by Bunker Arquitectura, which was given the commission after one of Bunker’s architects chose the La Estancia Wedding Gardens as the site for his wedding.

Cuernavaca is about an hour south of Mexico city, and is in a tropical climate. The owner of the Wedding Garden was initially interested in building a masonry chapel on the grounds of the garden, and was intrigued by the idea of having the architect who was getting married design the chapel in which he would be wed.

Glass chapel was built in about four months

The architects designed a space that would take advantage of the natural beauty of the gardens. That meant forgoing the masonry chapel originally conceived by the owner.

Instead, the architects chose to work with glass, and created a chapel space that is open, airy and does not require air conditioning. The chapel is shaded by large jacaranda trees. The goal was to build the chapel while making a minimal impact on the environment, and no trees or other natural vegetation were removed to construct the building.

The design of the glass chapel was inspired by Tadao Ando’s Chapel of Light and Steven Holl’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The four sides of the chapel feature open glass plates. On the altar end of the chapel, the glass forms an open, cross-shaped window that provides a view of the garden behind the chapel.

The chapel was designed and built in about four months. It includes electricity, but uses natural ventilation and permits the use of natural light for daytime ceremonies. The space is largely open, allowing personalized arrangements for seating and the ceremony itself. Flowers and other natural decorations are often used to customize the look of the space.

If you’re looking for more inspiration for decorating with glass, please visit the rest of our site. If you’re ready to tackle a glass decorating project that uses Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Bunker Arquitectura/Megs Inniss & Sebastian Suarez

Iconic Glass Structures – Palm House, Kew Gardens

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Iconic Glass Structures – Palm House, Kew Gardens

Iconic Glass Structures – Palm House, Kew Gardens

In Southwest London, the iconic Kew Gardens houses the world’s most diverse collection of living plants – numbering about 30,000. The Herbarium at Kew Gardens contains about 7 million preserved plants. The on-site library contains about 750,000 volumes dedicated to plant studies. In 2003, Kew Gardens was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Palm House is glass, wrought iron

The Palm House is one of three major buildings on the grounds. It is a breathtaking glass structure made of wrought iron and glass. The building houses the Garden’s collection of palms. A second structure, twice the size of the Palm House, known as the Temperate House, is the largest glasshouse in the world. The third major structure in the Kew Gardens is the Princess of Wales Conservatory, which was opened in 1987. It houses plants from the dry and wet tropics.

Kew, which is an area that has been absorbed by London, has been the site of a royal residence since about 1300. The Kew Gardens were originally created in the late 1700’s by combining several royal residences. At that time, the Garden’s first curator was also appointed. The Gardens became a national botanical garden in 1840, shortly before the Palm House was built. The Palm House was constructed between 1844-1848 of wrought iron and glass. It is the largest surviving Victorian-era iron-and-glass structure in the world. The glass panes in the Palm House are all hand-blown. The original glass in the Palm House was tinted green to reduce the heat buildup in the building.

The Kew Gardens is one of London’s top tourist attractions. Annually, it welcomes more than 1.3 million visitors, and occupies about 300 acres.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialty glass coating product designed to bond permanently to glass. Glassprimer™ is low-odor, and comes in both oil- and water-based forms. If you’re looking for some 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: Steve James , via Flickr.com

Iconic Glass Structures – Bahrain World Trade Centre

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Iconic Glass Structures – Bahrain World Trade Centre

Iconic Glass Structures – Bahrain World Trade Centre

The Bahrain World Trade Centre is a 50-story, glass-sheathed, twin tower building located in Manama, Bahrain. The sail-shaped towers incorporate wind turbines into three skywalks that connect the towers. The turbines catch incoming winds from the Persian Gulf, and can each generate 225 kW of power. The turbines, which measure nearly 100 feet in diameter, were estimated produce about 10%-15% of the electricity consumed by the tower occupants at the time of the building’s construction.

The London-based architectural firm Atkins designed the Bahrain World Trade Centre, and construction was completed in 2008. The design has won numerous awards for sustainability. The Bahrain World Trade Centre was the first tall building in the world to incorporate wind turbines into its design. Atkins used extensive wind-flow data from the site to determine the buildings’ final shape. The shape of the building maximizes wind flow between the towers, which optimizes the power output of the turbines.

The slope of the towers distributes airflow evenly to the turbines, which allows them to rotate at the same speed and generate similar power. Although the design projections estimated that the turbines would generate a maximum of 15% of the building’s electrical demand, actual operation shows that the turbines generate significantly more than the design projection. The positioning of the building has raised debate among architects, some of whom believe that if the buildings had been built in the exact opposite configuration, the turbines could have generated an additional 15% more power. Repositioning the turbines could have allowed them to generate 30% more power, making the building nearly completely self-sustaining.

The World Trade Centre is integrated into an existing hotel complex. Retail space and restaurants are also in operation on the towers lowest floors. The building features 45 occupied aboveground floors and one below-grade floor. Additional stories at the top of the tower are not occupied.

The building superstructure, which is made of steel and concrete, makes liberal use of glass in all occupied spaces, as well as public spaces and in the skywalks between towers. The low-emissivity glass reduces solar heat gain in the interior spaces. A buffer separates the interior space from the building’s exterior, also to reduce heat buildup. Chilled water cools the building’s interior, and reflecting pools provide evaporative cooling at ground level. The building’s low-leakage windows are operable.

If you’re looking for some additional 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: Photos By Clark , via Flickr.com

Iconic Glass Structures – The Reichstag Dome

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Iconic Glass Structures – The Reichstag Dome

Iconic Glass Structures – The Reichstag Dome

The Reichstag building in Berlin features the Reichstag Dome, an iconic glass addition to the building that houses the Bundestag, the German Parliament. The Reichstag building in Berlin was originally constructed in 1894 to address the need for a larger building to house the Parliament. The original building featured a large dome.

Reichstag Dome was rebuilt following reunification

The building was largely destroyed in 1933, the result of a suspicious fire that was blamed on Communist supporters. There was no actual evidence to suggest the true origin of the fire, or even that the fire was deliberate. Allied bombings of Berlin during World War II destroyed the remainder of the building. The Soviets partially rebuilt the building as a conference center in the 1960’s, during their occupation of the city. The dome, which had been an integral part of the original design, however, was not part of the reconstruction. Meanwhile, the western capital relocated to Bonn.

With the reunification of Germany, Berlin again became the country’s capital city. The Parliament decided to rebuild the Reichgstag dome, using the Soviet’s initial reconstruction as a starting point. The government sponsored a design contest to rebuild the dome over the Parliament building in 1993. Norman Foster, a British architect, won the contest and was commissioned to rebuild the Reichstag Dome.

Foster’s original design was rejected on the basis of cost, and eventually, he designed the glass dome, incorporating spiral staircases originally proposed by another architect. The design allows the public to ascend to top of the dome, and see down into the Parliamentary chambers. The design supports the broader idea that the government serves its people.

The glass in the dome relies on a series of mirrors to reflect sunlight into the dome without increasing the temperature in the building. A specially designed shade tracks the movement of the sun to block direct sunlight throughout the day. The dome actually increases the energy efficiency of the building.

When it was first introduced, the glass dome was controversial. The glass dome provides a 360° view of both the activities in the Bundestag, and the City of Berlin. The dome is open to the public from 8:00 AM to midnight daily and has become a very popular and inspirational tourist attraction.

If you’re looking for some glass inspiration of your own, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Reinhard Link , via Flickr.com

Iconic Glass Structures–National Grand Theatre

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Iconic Glass Structures – The National Grand Theatre

Iconic Glass Structures – The National Grand Theatre

The National Grand Theatre, also known as the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, opened in 2007. The building, which was designed by French architect Paul Andreu, is egg shaped, and appears to float on a manmade lake. Visitors enter the building from a tunnel that goes under the lake.

Glass and titanium is surrounded by water


The NCPA houses three performance facilities- The Opera Hall, The Concert Hall and The Theatre Hall. The venue accommodates about 5,500 visitors at a time. The building consists of a glass and titanium skin and is approximately 700 x 475x 150, meaning that the building exceeds 330,000 square feet.

The NCPA operates as a partially subsidized venture between the central Chinese government, the local Beijing government and the Centre itself. About 60% of the facility’s operating costs come from governmental funds. About 70% of the tickets for events at the venues are reserved and priced for ordinary Chinese citizens. The remaining tickets are priced according to market demand.

The building’s exterior consists of more than 18,000 titanium panels and 1,000 “white” glass panels. The titanium panels are located at the ends of the “egg”, giving the visual impression of a theater curtain being drawn back to reveal the performances inside.

The NCPA is located immediately west of Tiananmen Square and the Great Hall of the People. The performance halls in the building each have their own decorating theme. The Opera Hall is predominantly white and silver. The Concert Hall is predominantly gold. The Theatre Hall is decorated in red, following traditional Chinese style.

The building was designed to reflect the buildings around it. It incorporates a large green space around the building, which is open to the public. The building also has underground parking. The complex creates a relaxing oasis in the middle of a city of nearly 9 million people.

Construction of the glass and titanium building took more than 5 years, and took place between 2001 and 2007. Construction was delayed for a time, following the collapse of an airport terminal in Paris that used similar design features. Construction resumed after minor design changes, and the NCPA welcomed its first visitors in 2007.

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 Flickr.com

Iconic Glass Structures – Edifici Gas Natural

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Iconic Glass Structures – Edifici Gas Natural

Iconic Glass Structures – Edifici Gas Natural

Barcelona is home to a number of distinctive iconic glass structures, not the least of which is Edifici Gas Natural, also known as Torre Mare Nostrum. This 20-story building is unusual, not because it’s clad in 18,000 square meters of solar-control glass, but because of its distinctive cantilevered extension. The extension, which rises to half of the building’s height, appears to float off the side of the vertical tower.

Glass building transitions old to new

The building houses the offices of the natural gas utility in the city, and was built on the site of the city’s original natural gas plant. Like the tower itself, the cantilevered extension is also fully occupied workspace. Architects Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue of EMBT submitted the winning building design, but Miralles never saw the completed project. He died shortly after his design was accepted.

Because the glass used in the building is low-emissivity coated glass, the building is highly energy efficient. The architects intended to create a landmark for the Barcelona skyline, and they succeeded. At the same time, the building is close to low-rise housing, so the designers wanted their building to “communicate” with the surrounding low-rise buildings.

The building is located on the edge of an area of the city known as La Barceloneta, which borders the Mediterranean Sea, and was originally constructed in the mid-1700’s. La Barceloneta is a gateway to the rest of the city, but it is still largely residential, which explains the architects’ desire to avoid building a tower that did rose abruptly among the surrounding low-rise buildings.

The building has been complete for just 11 years, and offers a distinctively modern appearance. In addition to the low-rise buildings, the Torre Mare Nostrum is also near two other skyscrapers also designed in the High-Tech Architecture style – the Hotel Arts and the Torre Mapfre.

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

Photo Credit: Teresa Grau Ros , via Flickr.com

Iconic Glass structures – 30 St Mary Axe

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Iconic Glass structures - 30 St Mary Axe

Iconic Glass structures – 30 St Mary Axe

Another entry in our series of Iconic Glass Structures is 30 St. Mary Axe in London. This 41-story commercial building is located in the financial district. Designed by architect Norman Foster and built by Skanska, the building was opened in 2004 on the site of two former buildings that were razed after being badly damaged by an IRA bomb. The building was originally designed for insurance firm Swiss Re, but today it serves a number of diverse tenants.

30 St. Mary Axe, named after the building’s address, is informally known as The Gherkin because of its distinctive shape. The building, which has a circular floor plan, tapers as it rises, and appears to come to a point. The building’s curved appearance is deceptive. The glass panels on the outside are all flat, with a single exception at building’s top. It is extremely energy efficient. Its unique design provides natural ventilation and natural lighting, and incorporates passive solar heat in the winter.

30 St. Mary Axe has won numerous architectural awards and quickly became an iconic landmark in London. The building was sold in 2014 to its current owners for 700 million pounds, making it the most expensive commercial property in London. A number of highly visible clients lease space in the building. In addition, the building provides space for retailers and restaurants.

30 St. Mary Axe has more than 150,000 square feet of office and retail space. Unlike many commercial designs, 30 St. Mary Axe does not rely on central columns for internal support. This allows the office spaces to incorporate open floor plans. The 40th floor of the building hosts a bar with 360° views of the city.

With all tall buildings, wind can cause them to sway. To control sway, many buildings employ braces or dampers to counteract forces generated by the wind. The design of 30 St. Mary Axe makes it sufficiently stiff to resist wind-induced sway, so the building does not have any additional bracing or dampers to control wind movement.

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

Photo Credit: Aurelien Guichard , via Flickr.com

Iconic Glass structures – Beeld en Geluid

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Iconic Glass structures - Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision

Iconic Glass structures – Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision

The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Beeld en Geluid) is a Dutch cultural museum that collects and archives Dutch media, located in Hilversum, Noord-Holland. Currently, the museum’s collection exceeds 1,000,000 hours of film, video and audio recordings of Dutch cultural significance. The oldest recordings date to 1898.

Building employs unique glass printed panels

The 21,500 square-foot museum is cube-shaped, only half of which sits above ground. The building, designed by Architectenburo Neutelings Riedijk, is clad in 2,100 multicolored glass panels. Dutch graphic artist Jaap Drupsteen designed the building’s façade.

The panels are not simply colored glass. They contain nearly 750 relief images that were printed using a process that took three years to develop. The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) developed the printing process and equipment. French glass manufacturer Saint Gobain Glass was instrumental in producing the panels over a six-month period.

The images were randomly chosen from among the museum’s collection, and were digitally printed onto the glass panels using a unique powder printing process that combined digital printing and slumping. The images are UV resistant and have proven to be exceptionally durable.

The powder printing process involved the deposition of red, yellow and blue colored glass powder, using a specially developed printer. The process also requires special software that converts an image’s cyan, magenta and yellow colors into the proper amounts of the colored glass powder. The process deposits the colored glass in three separate layers, and then heated to the point of melting. When the powders melt, they produce the desired color and the relief in clear glass.

The museum project was completed in 2006, and consists of the museum and offices, a shop, a theater, parking spaces, and a green roof that covers the underground parking structure. A multilevel pond with fountains and waterfalls provides a significant water reservoir for firefighting, should it become necessary to protect the museum’s collection.

If you’d like inspiration for your glass project, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Pieter van Marion, via Flickr.com

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 – Farnsworth House

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Iconic Glass Structures – Farnsworth House

Iconic Glass Structures – Farnsworth House

Periodically, we take a look at iconic glass structures. Today, we look at the Farnsworth House in Plano, IL. The Farnsworth House was designed in 1945 by Mies van der Rohe, but the house was not actually constructed until 1951. Between its design and construction, a model of the house was used as an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Glass and steel characteristic of modernism

The Farnsworth House was commissioned by Dr. Edith Farnsworth, for whom the house is named. The house, which appears to float on a was used as a private residence, until it was purchased in 2003 jointly by two historic preservation groups. The house currently operates as a museum.

Mies van der Rohe was a German-American architect and is considered one of the founders of the modern architecture movement. He strove to create buildings that minimized the structural framework in order to improve the transition between the structure and its surroundings. Mies van der Rohe’s designs often incorporated glass and steel. The Farnsworth House has no interior walls, but it does have structures in the space that imply distinct areas. It also has full length draperies that provide privacy when desired.

The modernist movement followed the conclusion of World War I. Following the war, traditional classical architecture in Europe was unpopular because many people saw it as a reflection of Europe’s faltering class-based societies. Designers were looking for a style that complemented the industrial character of 20th century life, and the modernist style took root.

By the late 1930’s, Mies van der Rohe, who was the last director of the Bauhaus, closed it on the recommendation of the school’s faculty. The Nazis, who had risen to power in Germany, found that the Bauhaus was not sufficiently “German” and made it very difficult for the school to continue. Mies van der Rohe migrated to the United States and took commissions in the western United States and Chicago, where he was the head of the School of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Many of Mies van der Rohe’s works incorporate glass liberally, including Crown Hall on the IIT campus; IBM Plaza in Chicago; 860-880 Lakeshore Drive in Chicago; the Chicago Federal Center; the Seagram building in New York City, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.

If you’d like some inspiration for your glass decorating projects, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: jalbertgagnier, via Flickr.com