Crystal House, Chanel’s flagship store in Amsterdam, has won a Dutch Design Award for its wall made of glass bricks that was load bearing yet transparent.
The bricks were developed by a team from the Technical University Delft who were tasked with creating a façade that was transparent but strong and vandal-proof at the same time.
PhD students Telesilla Bristogianni and Faidra Oikonomopoulou from the university's Civil Engineering and Geosciences glass lab were asked to look into the design and manufacturing process of the bricks.
This involved heating shards of glass placed on top of an earthenware pot. The glass melts and leaks into the pot. Then, via a hole in the bottom of the pot the molten glass flows evenly into a mould. The furnace is left to cool down slowly, allowing the glass to harden in controlled manner so it won’t crack at the centre.
"We had to think of lots of ways of testing this," said Oikonomopoulou.
"How do you determine the strength of a glass brick or wall? How do we make the bricks and how do we cool them down in a way that keeps them transparent? And what do we use to stick them together?"
They had to rule out cement because it would compromise transparency. So the solution they hit upon was a transparent glue which can withstand the changes in temperatures a structure like this is subject to.
The pair singlehandedly built the first 1.5 m of the Crystal House façade.
"We were laying bricks at the construction site from 7.30 in the morning to 7.30 at night to show the workmen how it was done," said Bristogianni. "It was tough but a good way of learning to manage a big project."
Back at the lab, the research group is building on new ideas generated by the Crystal House project. They are studying the manufacture of glass columns. Pillars or columns made of concrete break up a space and obstruct the view, making them the pet hatred of many architects. Bristogianni and Oikonomopoulou believe glass can be used instead
"People are not completely convinced that glass is actually strong enough," said Bristogianni.
"We can show them the scientific proof of course but there’s a psychological aspect to consider as well. A ceiling that rests on two transparent pillars that are barely visible can freak people out: that ceiling isn’t held up by anything!"
That is why the duo is making the columns slightly less transparent than the bricks used for the Crystal House. Oikonomopoulou developed a new version of the bundles column, consisting of 7 transparent glass rods that are joined and glued together. This causes the light in the rods to refract making the pillars easy to distinguish.
"And it has the added bonus of preventing people from bumping into them," she adds.
[Telesilla Bristogianni (left) and Faidra Oikonomopoulou behind their glass bricks. Photo: TU Delft]
Infrastructure will be a major topic of discussion at the Australian Engineering Conference 2016 in Brisbane on November 23-25.