London’s famous Crystal Palace may have been destroyed by fire in 1936 but its legacy lives on. The giant glass-and-iron landmark didn’t just set an architectural standard for exhibition halls that lasted centuries; it also deeply influenced the way we perceive buildings and their materiality today.
Its structure
– which comprised an intricate network of 1,000 slender iron beams and pillars,
supporting 84,000sqm of transparent glass formed into the largest sheets ever
made – provided a level of open floor space, natural light and transparency
previously unseen in buildings of its size.
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| The Crystal Palace in London |
As the first-ever, large-scale glass-and-metal building, the Crystal Palace was an architectural wonder. But more than that, it signalled a new era of architectural exploration; one aligned with a new, modernist optimism and equipped with all its most revolutionary technologies.
The now-ubiquitous glass skyscraper is one of the results of this exploration of which the Crystal Palace was a pioneer. With thanks to modernist architects like Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, our modern cities are literally filled with them.
Like modernists within other fields, Van Der Rohe and other architects that worked within what came to be called the ‘International Style’ were deeply committed to the idea of ‘universal access’. In the case of architecture, this meant creating easily-emulated building templates that could be translated for use around the world.
Guided by the mantra of ‘more with less’ – and harnessing the intrinsically modern social, financial and cultural associations of glass and steel – the Internationalists implemented a globalised model for glass skyscraper design. This building model went on to become aspirational for world economies everywhere.
It is only now, from the vantage of our contemporary viewpoint, that we know how problematic this universal model could be. Specifically that these buildings – which generally resemble a glass-skinned box with a central services core – were built irrespective of the place they inhabited, for the sake of broader philosophical goals and symbolic meaning.
Despite major advances in the environmental performance of glass skyscrapers over the past few decades, there is a growing consensus within the architecture and engineering industries that we cannot keep designing tall buildings with full-height glazing. Quite simply, it is not sustainable.
Major reason for this is that glass is a poor insulator, and highly-glazed buildings require an unsustainable level of mechanical heating and/or cooling, in energy terms, glass is extremely inefficient – it does little but leak heat on cold winter nights and turn buildings into greenhouses on summer days. Thus the Crystal Palace of London was modelled off a greenhouse design.
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| The Crystal Palace from inside |
This view was expressed by architect Ken Shuttleworth the designer of London’s Gerkin building and supported by David Coley professor of low carbon design at the University of Bath.
This argument also lends itself to the same type of universalism that became the ultimate downfall of modernism.
This view is right in saying that the U-value of triple glazing (around 1.0) is far worse than that of a well-insulated wall (nearing 0.1), but this is a singular analysis of one of the roles glass plays in a building’s entire energy performance. All considered, we should not be so quick to right-off its importance in sustainable design.
For example, Dr. Philip Oldfield, a senior lecturer in high performance architecture at University of NSW, notes that a high amount of glazing (around 80%) on the north façade of a Melbourne tower could actually reduce the energy needs of the building when used with shading, since the additional solar heat gain would offset the cold winter temperatures.
Coley also neglects to note that not all of a glass curtain wall’s function is as a window. Sustainability consultant Steve King explains:
“Where optical transparency is not an issue, glass can be backed by extremely efficient insulation,” he says. “Such a wall can far outperform the heat transmission characteristics of traditional wall assemblies.”
King also argues that a more comprehensive discussion of glass skyscrapers and sustainability would acknowledge that glass wall assemblies are easy to disassemble, recycle, repurpose and maintain. They are also excellent substrates for emerging thin film photovoltaics that can contribute to turning a building into a net energy exporter.
Plainly saying; There are still those of us states arguments that the world is not round. It's flat.
But nontheless it moves.
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