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Originally Posted by Hudson11
However, natural light is an important attraction these days especially with the shift towards more green friendly buildings. You can't get as much natural light without a transparent or otherwise glassy facade.
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As the article clearly mentioned, glass would still often tend to have a rather negative impact on energy consumption for causing heat loss or on the contrary an excessive use of AC. While artificial lighting is definitely much less costly than heating or AC today, owing to economical light bulbs and the widely spread LED technology in particular. Newer types of glazed façades like those either double-skinned (to restrain sunshine) or triple-glazed (to save heat) surely help, but there are still some related problems.
That being said, glass could also help in saving energy, simply by making a proper use of it depending on the overall climate of a region and window orientations. In northern regions like the Canadian provinces, a wide window oriented to the South is certainly more comfy than to the North in that respect. While in Texas, the opposite would likely be better. That seems pretty obvious, though. They should even make an extensive use of systems to regulate the crushing effect of sunshine in the southern US, the so called Sun Belt.
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Originally Posted by Austin55
What about glass like the 787 has? |
Well yes! If this thing is energy-efficient, it's a pretty cool solution. I'm only wondering how much it would cost to the scale of a whole skyscraper. There's also
brise-soleil that's been in use all over the world for ages in architecture. That's probably usually not too expensive, except maybe for the most sophisticated modern versions that are automated mechanisms to let a certain amount of daylight in, depending on the sunshine intensity. Like the system in use at the Paris Arab World Institute, the most impressive brise-soleil mechanism I've ever seen in person.
Anyway, today, it just requires some bioclimatic studies to make proper decisions in building designs. Skilled architects surely can take an aesthetic advantage of this, cause it should motivate them to design some more sophisticated and more diverse façades. There's no reason to systematically ban fully glazed façades. There's no reason to build only glazed façades, like exclusively either. The best would be to make a proper use of what's available in modern engineering.