A carefully designed facade transforms how we see and experience space. If you take a look at the urban skyline, you will notice that a lot of buildings have glass facades that make them uniquely beautiful. Glass facades, which are typically glass curtain walls, allow warmth and light into the building while offering transparency and openness. Even though this may seem like a new trend in architecture, there are some iconic buildings around the world that feature such glass facades.
Davis-Harrington Welcome Center, Springfield, The USA
This building serves as the front door to Missouri State University. The building program is arranged in a two-story scheme. The building enclosure uses a variety of materials in response to the surrounding campus context. Limestone offers a durable and contextual surface at the ground. To the north, it offers greater transparency through a tapering curtain wall glass that highlights the main entrance of the building.
White Swisspearl panels sheathe the building’s fully-glazed upper sections of the east and west facades. This 13,000-square-foot facility provides a point of origin for campus visits. The two-story lobby and a 100-seat presentation room offer a multipurpose venue for special events like conferences, networking events, and more.
Steven L. Anderson Design Center, Fayetteville, The USA
This building project features over 17 different glass make-ups in a wide array of system types. The design center features studio and critique spaces along with an auditorium and roof terrace. It also features careful material detailing that complements the building’s historic counterpart. It has a large fritted-glass brise-soleil that screens western sunlight and illustrates construction methods.
This design center is a 37,000-square-foot addition to Vol Walker Hall. It adds a modern touch to the traditional architecture of Vol Walker Hall. Indiana limestone panels clad the north and south walls of the design center. The sleek fritted-glass panels are designed to tackle the harshness and heat of western light.
Kaap Skil, Maritime and Beachcombers Museum, Oudeschild, Netherlands
The museum is designed with four uniquely linked gabled roofs, which echo the rhythm of the surrounding rooftops. The wooden facade of Kaap Skil is a great example of the Dutch tradition of reusing washed-up objects. The vertical wooden boards are made of sawn hardwood sheet piling from the North Holland Canal. From within, the glass facade in front of the wooden boards offers an inviting view of the outdoor terrain.
Inside the building, you can see a linear pattern of daylight and shadow cast by the boards. They create an atmosphere infused with light and shelter. On the first floor, the North Holland sky pours the objects on display with immense light. Under the high gabled roofs, the visitor gets a good look at the collection, the museum grounds, and the village of Oudeschild.
JTI Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland
This system represents one of the best-performing all-glass facade systems in the history of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the architects. The innovative Closed Cavity Facade (CCF) of the building unitizes a curtain wall system that responds to the changing demands of seasonally varying external conditions. At the same time, it offers exceptional views out and maximizes natural light penetration into the building.
The interior design concept takes advantage of both vertical and horizontal interconnectivity. This helps the organization’s need for a social and collaborative community space for its large team of 1,000+ employees. The open-plan space was created with an innovative engineering design solution. A peripheral torsional tube structural steel system was used to allow for column-free floor plates spanning 18 meters.
Pierres Vives, Montpellier, France
This building was formed around a single continuous envelope. It creates a fluid identity that is reflected in glass and opaque surfaces. The project used over a thousand large precast concrete modules to complement the flow of the column-beam structure. A system of curtain walls extends between these.
Upon arriving at the main entrance, you get to the educational spaces of the archives on ground level from the lobby. Visitors may also take a lift and escalator to get to the main public artery on level one. This artery is situated all along the facades as a recessed glass strip.
Conclusion
There are plenty of reasons why architects and builders prefer glass facades for their projects. While they offer transparency and openness, they also help maximize daylight penetration. Most importantly, they offer unique architectural designs that are both aesthetic and practical.