Transparent glass often requires drawing blinds for large parts of the day.



Comfortably clad

by ArabianBusiness.com staff writer Tuesday, 29 July 2008

With energy efficiency and user comfort at the forefront of FM concerns, glass cladding in the Middle East needs to be reconsidered.

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Architects generally agree that façade materials must be carefully chosen for their durability, aesthetic appeal and cultural suitability. As cladding provides viewers their first impressions of a building, architects need it to look the part.
"Choosing the right façade for a structure is vital," says Janus Rostock, senior designer for Atkins. "The façade reflects what the rest of the building is like. In the Middle East, traditionally, a façade has been very much just a skin to be clad onto a structure-a mask, so to speak-which does not express what is on the inside."

Facilities managers (FMs), on the other hand, need a building's cladding to act the part. To continue the metaphor, FMs need the "mask" to reflect the personality of the building, but more importantly, to cover, protect and safeguard its users.

Is it smart to build glass buildings in the middle of the desert? It is if you can harness the sun and use it to help with electricity costs. - Arthur Millwood, Emirates Glass
FMs need it to achieve environmental standards, perform well in myriad climates and ensure both visual and physical comfort to inhabitants. From an FM perspective, if a building doesn't safeguard the comfort of its users, it hasn't done its job, and frankly, neither has the FM.

Especially in Dubai-the world's fastest developing city; one of the world's richest cities; the commercial icon of the Middle East-what is perceived as cutting-edge or avant-garde is generally preferred to that which is more practical, and often, that which is more environmentally friendly.

Take, for example, the use of transparent glass. Architects love it because even the mundane functions of those inside provides a diverse and ever-changing façade for viewers. But in the scorching heat of the Middle East, that transparent glass fails to keep users cool without an excessive load on the building's cooling system.

"Architects want transparency. It's fashionable right now. They want to see the people, the furniture and everything that's happening in the building," says Arthur Millwood, technical manager of Emirates Glass. "But, with the amount of sunlight in the UAE, there will always be a problem with too much light. More transparency means higher heat gain, higher heat gain means less energy efficiency."

As Rostock points out, Dubai's economic abundance is attracting signature architects and top-quality FMs and neither they, nor their financially flamboyant clients, will be satisfied with a building that does anything short of dance, sing and sparkle.

But, while aesthetic and structural considerations are usually addressed by a combination of architects and engineers during conceptual design, FMs rate a building's success or failure on its ability to achieve performance and comfort standards. Put simply, FMs need a buildigy to put up or shut up. All too often, when those standards go unmet and that building doesn't put up, improper cladding is the usual suspect.

A case study

Millwood offers the Burj Dubai as an example of a building whose architects used reflective glass intelligently to keep its inhabitants cool and the sun out. Whereas BurJuman-Bur Dubai's massive high-end shopping mall and commercial centre-on the other hand, "uses a type of glass that has 50% light transmission so its inhabitants need to keep their blinds shut most of the time."

When keeping their blinds shut, inhabitants can effectively keep the sun out, but then the benefits of choosing glass cladding are lost.

According to Millwood, because Burj Dubai has achieved such worldwide recognition, it has the potential to single-handedly quell the use of transparent glass and actually point the industry back in the direction of reflective glass façades.

A case for efficiency

It's true that a glass façade can provide a building with a rainbow of external options in terms of colour, design and scope, but there is more to the argument than just aesthetics.



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