The shiny, modern and beautiful glass building is a landscape of the big city. Who invented the exterior wall of the building?
The whimsical person is actually the most creative person. The original intention of the window was „the hole in the wall.” In 1919, some people wanted to expand the glass window indefinitely and even replace the entire wall.
This man is the German architect Mies van der Rohe, one of the four most famous modern architects in the world in the mid-20th century.
In 1921, Mies made his whimsical vision into a model—all the walls of the building were made of glass, called the “glass building”. He claims to combine the window and the wall. The glass exterior is both a transparent window and a solid wall.
Mies’s „glass building” is only a vision. In 1976, the famous American Chinese architect, Bei Yuming, turned Mies’s vision into reality. In the United States, Boston built the 60-story Hancock Building, which is a glass facade. Skyscrapers.
This new building, which is transparent and has a mirror-like exterior wall, is a bright spot. It has suddenly sensationalized the United States and sensationalized the world.
The glass exterior is called the louver glass price curtain wall, and Mies is known as the „father of the glass curtain wall.”
However, the good times did not last long, and the praise of the Hancock Building quickly became a criticism. The glass curtain wall of the building used a total of 10,344 pieces of 1.4 meters × 3.5 meters of glass, only three years of glory broke more than 2,000 pieces! Beautiful high-rise buildings are riddled with holes.
This is because the strength of those glasses is not enough, and the strength of the steel frame supporting the glass is not enough. After five years of repairing, Hancock Building was not able to cure the „scar” on the outer wall.
In recent decades, after continuous improvement, the quality of glass curtain walls has been significantly improved:
Tempering
The tempering (heat treatment) glass has an impact strength that is 3 to 5 times higher than that of ordinary glass, and even if it is broken, it is broken into fine glass pieces without sharp angles.
Hollow
The curtain wall glass is made into two layers (or even three layers), and the dry air or inert gas is filled between the two glasses, which can greatly improve the heat preservation, heat insulation and sound insulation performance.
According to measurements, when the outdoor temperature is -10 ° C, the temperature in front of the single-layer glass window is -2 ° C, and the indoor temperature using the three – layer insulating glass is 13 ° C.
It should be emphasized that the air filled in the insulating glass must be dry, in order to prevent moisture from condensing in the inner layer in winter, affecting transparency.
Double silver
The glass is coated with two extremely thin silver films. This „double silver glass” transmits light through the visible light but reflects the sun’s thermal radiation (infrared rays). In the hot summer, double-layer double-silver insulating glass can transmit 90% of visible light and block 90% of solar radiant heat.