Upstream | July 08, 2009 | 7 comments

Rooms made of... glass?

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/science/07glass.html?ref=science

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To truly appreciate how glass can be used structurally, make your way to 233 South Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago. More precisely, make your way 1,353 feet above South Wacker, to the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower.

Once there, take a few steps over to the west wall, where the facade has been cut away. Then take one more step, over the edge.

You’ll find yourself on a floor of glass, suspended over the sidewalk a quarter-mile below. If you can’t bear looking straight down past your feet, shift your gaze out or up — the walls are glass, too, as is the ceiling. You’ve stepped into a transparent box, one of four that jut four and a half feet from the tower, hanging from cantilevered steel beams above your head. The glass walls are connected to the beams, and to the glass floor, with stainless-steel bolts. But what’s really saving you from oblivion is the glass itself.

“Ultimately what we’re all striving for is an all-glass structure,” said James O’Callaghan of Eckersley O’Callaghan Structural Design, who has designed what are perhaps the world’s best-known glass projects, the staircases that are a prominent feature of every Apple Store.

Through it all, they’ve realized one thing. “Glass is just another material,” said John Kooymans of the engineering firm Halcrow Yolles, which designed the Sears Tower boxes.

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Talk about a room with a view! While it seems like a neat concept, it doesn't appear to be terribly practical. Plus, I bet keeping it clean is a pain.
  1. groups:
    Art,   Upstream,   Architecture
  2. tags:
    Art,  Upstream,  Architecture,  Glass
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7 comments // Rooms made of... glass?

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