People who build glass towers …

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This article was published 09/10/2010 (5774 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

11The museum’s design team looked at a number of different glass products, including double and triple-glazed units, custom-curved glass and windows that could open and close to vent the cavernous interior of the museum. Units filled with argon and krypton glass were considered.

Eventually, the museum decided to go with a double-glazed unit manufactured by German-based Josef-Gartner Steel and Glass, one of the world’s leading glass curtain companies.

Each window unit is 42 millimetres thick, or roughly twice the thickness of the average residential double-glazed window. The museum window units feature a 10-millimetre fully tempered exterior glass pane, a 16-millimetre argon gas cavity, and an interior pane that is actually comprised of two eight-millimetre heat-strengthened panes laminated together.

The biggest design challenge for Gartner was how to replicate the flowing esthetic of Predock’s glass cloud using flat panes. This required Gartner to experiment with the size and shape of the glass, and the secondary steel beams needed to support the glass, to find the perfect balance between flowing profile and unobscured view. If the glass plates were too large, the flowing cloud would have too many hard angles and the supporting steel would have to be much thicker to support the additional weight. If the plates were too small, the steel would not be as thick, but there would be many more beams, which could compromise the view from the inside of the building.

After months of 3-D computer modelling trial and error, the final design settled on a glass plate that is roughly three metres long and 1.5 metres wide, supported by triple-coated mild steel supports. Two weather seals (one silicon, one rubber) would be used to seal the glass to the support steel.

However, the glass itself is only as good as the HVAC system used to heat, cool and ventilate the building. A poorly ventilated building means windows are vulnerable to frost and condensation. Properly ventilating buildings, in effect, bathing windows in a constant flow of heated or cooled air, eliminates those problems.

The museum will be heated by radiant hot water pipes, the heat generated by five three-million BTU natural-gas fired boilers. Two gigantic fans — each more than 1.27 metres in diameter — will move about 4,200 cubic metres per minute of either fresh or cooled air into the building. Duct work strung around the interior provides the ventilation currents that will keep a constant flow of heated or cooled air blowing against the windows.