House of the Future
The glass pavilion is one of six houses of the future created for the Year of the Built Environment; it showcases the latest in glass technology from Pilkington that’s specifically designed for Australian conditions. The YBE glass house of the future, like the famous glass pavilions and houses of the past, searches for transparency and lightness, along with a seamless connection between daylight, views and indoors and outdoors. At least that’s what we see. However the bigger difference is what we don’t see. The Glass House of the Future has no artificial mediation; it uses materials that have coatings so thin they are measured by the molecule and so few molecules that they are transparent.
The environment that the pavilion was placed in demanded a great deal from the glazing with a glass roof and no external shading for the walls in extreme solar conditions. Thermal Comfort Modelling by Arup using airflow analysis indicated that is was possible to achieve an internal environment that would be comfortable. Central to the design of the house are two solar chimneys and the specification of high performance solar and thermal control glass. The chimneys that at first glance might be mistaken for evaporative coolers, draw air from the south side floor level glass louvres through the building driven by the stack effect.
The structure comprised three prefabricated external portal frames that were then glazed and finally locked together. The roof is Pilkington Seraphic™ design glass, 16.76mm Heat Soak strengthened and laminated. The white dot matrix pattern that has been screen printed and permanently fused onto the inner surface serves several functions. It acts as a sunshade providing glare control and eliminates 40% of solar heating that also diffuses light during the day, but it also reflects night lighting. Instead of a dark void, the ceiling appears white. The walls provide very high solar control, low E thermal insulation, noise insulation, fading reduction, are self cleaning and if broken, safety and security. The vertical glass required transparency and clarity along with solar performance. This was achieved by Pilkington Solar-E™ Plus – a new product developed by Pilkington for Australian conditions and unveiled here for the first time worldwide. Its attributes provide for very high light transmission (56%) and low visible reflectivity (7%) that reads as transparent clarity. The technology uses a spectrally selective laminate that absorbs infrared heat but not daylight, eliminating almost 70% of solar heat gain. A virtually invisible low E coating to the inside of the glass provides thermal insulation and also acts as a re-radiation barrier to the absorbed heat in the glass.
To further push the technology frontier, Pilkington Activ™ self-cleaning glass was provided on the south elevation. The key benefit is that it cleans organic matter without the need for washing. Anything it can not dissolve is washed away by rain. The hydrophilic nature of the coating means that water doesn’t bead on the glass, instead it spreads out and is effectively a self ‘squeegee.’ The glass pavilion is important in that it shows and improves on concept designs conceived more than half a century ago. It does this with technology and environmental refinement while retaining the theme of transparency.