The Corning Museum of Glass received the Glass Magazine Award 2015

Date: 22 July 2015

The Glass Magazine Awards continue to recognize the projects and products that are redefining what is possible in the glass industry. "It's fascinating to see how architectural designs continue to evolve, becoming more and more complex", says Alice Dickerson, member of the jury and marketing manager for AGC Glass Co.

North America. "Glass Magazine Award Winners push the envelope of aesthetics, efficiency and performance."

The new exhibition building of the Corning Museum of Glass won the award for the most innovative curtain wall or enclosure project. "The simplicity of the design is triumphed only by the complex engineering that lies behind the glass, hidden from view, and only truly appreciated by those intimately involved", says Bob Gray, project manager for NEC. "The glass system itself is very unique in that all of the lites of glass are stacked upon one another, and all of the dead load is transferred to the foundation."

The Corning Museum of Glass is home to the world's most important collection of glass, including the finest examples of glassmaking spanning 3,500 years. The museum complex has been expanded in the past two years to more than 9,000 m². For the new exhibition building which will equally be an amazing exhibit of the museum itself Thiele Glas produces a total of 2,000 square meter glass consisting of 140 single panes. A 16-meter high facade is completely built out of glass measured up to 3.20 x 7.40 meter which creates a nearly seamless slightly reflective surface.

Glass composition as well as aluminum profiles should be considered as an absolute specialty of the project. For the first time Thiele Glas fabricated laminated safety glass which is separated by interlayer joints. This causes the effect of a window which allows the visitor to look through the glass whereas the areas with the Vanceva Polar White interlayer are opaque. Furthermore the project combines a structural interlayer with a white colored one and a digitally printed white dot-matrix for a mix of transparent and translucent interlayers.

The heavy 1,000-kilogram panes are held in place by aluminum profiles, which are bonded to the glass with silicone and mounted to the facade construction. The glass panes below were produced with the extremely robust interlayer (TG-SAFEplus) to achieve the structural requirements. Only small joints will be visible because panes are installed one upon the other, however, the building will appear as one single unit - like a huge showecase of glass. That is exactly what the architect, Thomas Phifer, imagined: 'the simplicity of the buildings form focuses the viewer on the materiality or ''potency'' of glass. You will read moments of transparency and moments of reflection. Each moment will reflect and absorb in a different way the light, the buildings and natural elements surrounding the structure.'

Using a product combination of TG-PROTECTcolor, TG-SAFEplus und TG-PRINTdigital, Thiele Glas fabricated the glass panes for the realization of this huge project.

Construction period: June 2012 until summer 2014, estimated

Architect: Thomas Phifer and Partners

General Contractor: Gilbane und Welliver MCGuire

Executing company: MBM Konstruktionen GmbH

Profile and joint bonding: HVF silicone specialists GmbH & Co.KG

Glass types: combination of TG-SAFEplus, TG-PROTECTcolor and TG-PRINTdigtial

Picture credits: © The Corning Museum of Glass

More information: www.cmog.org/expansion