Curved Glass In Architecture: A Difficult Adoption
Glass bending might appear like something very strange: after all
, we're used to believing that glass is best left alone and interfered with as very little as possible, lest it is shattered in a thousand, possibly sharp, pieces. Yet, in factories, on the manufacturing side of things, bending glass is a very common event, and if we take the time to have a little look around ourselves this piece of information shouldn't surprise us: curved glass is used in so many situations, from showers to the windshield in our very own car, that it is clear how bending it must be a common and well-known procedure.
Yet, windshields and shower cabinets are just a tiny example of the enormous number of uses that curved glass can find in everyday life - applications which we've all been witness to, possibly even today, in some form or another, even just walking on the street or simply sitting on the sofa in our lounge room. For instance, check out cabinets: while there are many varieties of such piece of furniture, different in shape, cost, and materials, we've surely seen at least a few models which sport bent glass on their doors, especially among the most expensive ones. On the flip side, let us go big and check out architecture: there are many applications, for example overhead windows, where bent glass is the ideal option, and in fact, we can at times find it used to great effect. Probably, however, architecture is the one field where curved glass has not been used to the maximum of its potential, and much remains to be done.
In general, all glass that is meant for architectural purposes - and of course, it's not like bent glass can be an exception to this fundamental rule - must answer to very stringent specifications , both from a structural and aesthetic point of view, to be considered fit for use. For instance, it must have the best possible optical qualities; at the same time, for issues of required strength, it must be quite thick, between 6 and 19 mm, and to be practical in application it must come in very big panes, even as big as 2200x3500 mm - far larger than any other curved glass used for other purposes. Such requirements have contributed to keeping the use of bent architectural glass low, and the scarcity of application has done nothing to make prices lower - which in fact discourages wider use all by itself, generating a stagnant situation which will certainly need some breakthroughs to be broken, especially from a technical standpoint.
However, there are more intricate reasons behind the relative scarcity of use of tempered bent glass for architectural purposes. Some of the most important factors can be summarized as follows:
1- price: flat glass structures are many times cheaper than bent glass ones;
2- information: information about bent glass is hard to find and imprecise, especially regarding its availability;
3- standards: shared standards are important to the diffusion of a product, and apart from a few factory-established ones, none yet are available for architectural curved glass;;
4- feasibility: Some types of glass exist which cannot, at least currently, be curved at all;;
5- variety: research for procedures to supply bent glass in all the varieties and coatings available for flat glass are still ongoing, and thus the market for bent glass isn't as rich as that for flat glass.
by: Vito Fekete
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