Churchill Downs ... designed to reflect the dynamic energy of the Kentucky Derby.
Dichroic glass adds visual appeal
Dichroic glass has given architects and designers the world over a new medium to make projects more vibrant and appealing with relative ease, writes Kenneth vonRoenn.
01 April 2006
Keeping pace with the rush to create landmark buildings, architects and designers in the vibrant and growing city of modern Dubai have been constantly looking for new and exciting ways to ensure that their buildings are distinctive.
In areas within the US where buildings are subject to planning laws restricting their height, a solution has been realised thanks to the artistic and technical skills at Architectural Glass Art of Louisville, Kentucky – a leader in the utilisation of glass as a decorative architectural medium.
The design skills of Architectural Glass Art, which is represented throughout the Arabian Gulf by Dubai-based Trident Gulf, have been widely appreciated by local architects and have already led to new and exciting uses for glass as a focal and innovative feature in new building designs.
Dichroic glass – a material originally developed for use in optics – has been adapted in ways to make architecture more visually exciting.
One of the new materials being increasingly used in architecture today, dichroic means two colours. This refers to a phenomenon whereby one colour is transmitted and its complementary colour is reflected when the glass is illuminated. Both the transmitted and the reflected colours shift, with a shift in the angle of incidence of light or with the change in viewing perspective. This visual effect is what gives dichroic glass its dynamic appearance.
The colour is actually a coating of metal oxides on the surface of the glass, which is referred to as an “interference filter” produced by the technology of thin-film deposition. Different metal oxides in layers as thin as 12 millionths of an inch (0.3 microns) create different transmitted and reflected colours. Because there are no dyes, paints or gels used in manufacturing dichroic glass it does not absorb any of the visible light impinging on its surface, as does coloured glass, creating more brilliant coloured light.
This dynamic quality of rich colours brought about by the use of dichroic glass has given more possibilities to make a work of architecture all the more interesting and enjoyable and the glass has been used by Architectural Glass Art to enhance several international projects including the following in the US:
• Wachovia Bank Headquarters (TVS Architects)
Arising as the crown of the skyscraper in, Charlotte, are 52 glass fins, 14 m tall and 10 m wide, composed of laminated glass with dichroic glass elements that change colours as light strikes the glass from different angles and is viewed from changing perspectives. This is the largest glass sculpture in the world weighing more than 110,000 kg and is designed to withstand hurricane force winds. The glass fins create a distinctive appearance, establishing an identity on the city skyline.
• Medical Center East (Meta Architects)
Like the Wachovia Bank crown, this suspended sculpture of dichroic glass at the Medical Center East, Louisville, was designed to establish a visual landmark and an identity for the hospital, distinguishing it from other such facilities. For this work, which is 10 m tall and 6 m wide, dichroic glass was heat-formed to create spiralling forms.
• Churchill Downs (Luckett and Farley Architects)
This suspended sculpture at Churchill Downs, also at Louisville, tries to establish an identity and also to elevate the significance of the central entry atrium, quite similar to the Medical Center project.
Composed of heat-formed dichroic acrylic with large-scale forms of horses that serve as both structural elements and as representations of the Triple Crown, it was designed to also reflect the dynamic energy of the Kentucky Derby, which is held annually at the track.
• Pedway and Gateway (Kenneth vonRoenn, Design Architect, Nolan and Nolan, Architect of Record)
As a pedestrian walkway that also serves as the gateway to the city’s cultural district, the work on the Pedway and Gateway to the Cultural District, at Louisville, uses dichroic glass to create a changing visual experience as it is viewed while driving and walking.
The dichroic glass fins continually change colours as they are cast and reflected onto the facades of the adjacent buildings and are viewed from different angles.
• Christ Church (Phillip Markwood, Architect)
Installed on the wall behind the altar of the cathedral at Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral in Cincinnati, is a wall relief sculpture in the form of a rose window. Along the perimeter of the sculpture are perpendicular planes of dichroic glass that cast a soft rose colour toward the centre and radiate gold rays when illuminated. The dichroic glass provides not only colour to the work but also adds to the dynamics with the light that plays off the supporting wall creating a visually-appealing work of art.
• Manchester College (Interdesign Architects)
Spanning four floors of the atrium of the Manchester College Science Building, North Manchester, is a suspended sculpture composed of dichroic acrylic and aluminium tubes. As light filters into the atrium the sculpture transforms it into a dynamic light show of different colours cast and reflected throughout the space. The colours continue to change, with the movement of the sun, creating a visually rich experience over the course of the day.
* Kenneth vonRoenn has worked in glass for more than 35 years designing more than 800 commissions, has a Masters in Architecture from Yale University, had an architectural practice, and is president and design director for Architectural Glass Art, UAE.
