Structural glass is an important ally in the design and construction of architecture with visual impact. For these uses, the most common are glasses reinforced with polyvinyl butyral (PVB) films, often used as safety glass.
However, structural glasses go one step further. They incorporate a much more rigid plastic film, so that they have greater strength and better mechanical performance, without reducing their transparency and without altering their colour.
These glasses are ideal for use in staircases, transparent floors, structural façades of buildings with a weightless appearance, swimming pools, parapets, pergolas and decorative elements with a structural function (beams, supports, brackets, brackets, skylights).
The use of these glasses allows the design and construction of architectural elements with great visual impact, without losing any of the safety offered by concrete or wood. Cutting-edge technologies and new materials, including these glasses, allow engineers to offer solutions for the design and construction of unique and innovative forms. Designers therefore are free to create sensations that approach weightlessness and invisibility, perhaps not suitable for those who suffer from vertigo.
By Jorge Laguna, head of the structures section of Amusement Logic’s Architecture Dept.
