Week-11 Pre-Session All-Glass Facades Won’t Exist in Sustainable Cities?

All-Glass Facades Won’t Exist in Sustainable Cities?

All-glass building should be designed with daylight adopting, solar radiation gaining and other characteristics. David Baggs in this article illustrates that all glass building trend is not sustainable enough for future urban development.

And also, the author presents new ideas against to the current design of skyscrapers. In this article, firstly, the process of glazing development is found as new problems. The unshaded glazing building use fossil fuel energy to complement the lack of internal comfort. Air conditioning is a typical equipment in this type of building to control the temperature. Trying to reduce the heat loss, double or triple glazing technology is a efficent approach to absorb or reflect radiation. However, this single technology cannot adapt the influence from season change. The type of glass which can absorb and reflect the heat can be used to reduce solar radiation. Finally, tinting facade can be used for absorbing radiation, however, it also can cause internal comfort problem. In addition, the article also demonstrates that architect should well consider the potantial issues on technology for the specific use within the building.

Secondly, David also demonstrates the significance of radiant heat that affect on human comfort. Most of building with glazed facade contain advanced glazing techique to control heat gain/loss, however, these methods are hard to control the radiant heat.