Glass construction is building with glass as a large facade-filling or even load-bearing material. Where glass once sat mainly as small panes in a frame, modern glass construction makes possible entire facades, roofs, floors and stairs of glass, thanks to strongly laminated and toughened safety glass.
Application
Glass construction is applied in curtain walls, glass shopfronts, rooflights, glass balustrades and even glass floors and stairs. In commercial building it produces transparent, light buildings; in housing, conservatories, extensions and large sliding fronts are realised with glass construction.
In larger glass structures the glass is carried by slender steel or aluminium profiles, by point fixings (spider fittings) or by glass fins themselves. The emphasis is on maximum transparency with a minimum of visible structure.
Characteristics
Structural glass is almost always laminated (several glass layers with an interlayer) and often toughened, so that on breaking it does not fall apart into shards but holds together. Key points are thermal insulation (insulating glass), solar gain and the avoidance of point stresses that can crack glass. Because glass is unforgiving under overload, careful detailing and calculation are essential.
Related terms
- glass
- building glass
- curtain wall
- insulating glass
- glass door
- rooflight
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