Major Projects Guide To Building With Glass

Date Published:

28/05/2008

Guide to Building with Glass

The Pros

It might not seem like the best idea to have structural elements of your home made from glass, a material generally associated with, well, breaking and causing painful injuries! However, it is structural glass technology that built the British Museum, amongst other great architectural landmarks.

Designed by Norman Foster, the museum is glazed with enough glass to build five hundred greenhouses. Architects love the chance to work with this material because it allows such license for creativity. But structural glass isn't reserved for massive public projects. The British Museum might be one of the grandest examples of glass architecture in the UK, but more modest examples exist in the most unexpected of places.

Take this contemporary house in north London. It has a fantastic triple-height atrium that's been drilled through the centre of three floors. Inside are walls, ceilings and floors made from glass, along with clear staircases and balustrades. The result - a building that is in part transparent.

Architect Shahriar Nasser's love of glass stems from the number of possibilities it opens up. "Being a transparent material it allows you to connect inside and outside. It gives you a lot of light into the building." By putting in what is known as a vision panel, Shahriar is able to expose the swimming pool below, which is exactly what the owners wanted.