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The Importance Of The Enclosure System

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Enclosure system

Eight “splinters” angled glass panels define the shape of the Shard and result in changes in the diversity of the skin patterns. This curtain walling system consists of 11200 glass panels with the area of totally 56,000 square meter, which is equivalent to eight football pitches. The glazing element comprises a standard high specification double glazed unit inside with the addition of glazed spandrel panels outside in a silver opaque colour. These spandrel panels not only increase the aesthetic appeal to the external curtain wall but also carry out the important job of masking parts of the building such as floors and steel structures that would otherwise be visible from the outside. Each floor has 114 glazed panels with …show more content…

In addition, a colourless low-radiation coating has been added to reduce the reflection of infrared radiation back into the building. (Martin, 2010) This kind of design aims to reflect the surrounding environment of the city. For example, the building will flash like a shard of glass on a sunny day.

In order to achieve the immaculately flush surface treatment, the external glass plate over-sails the polyester-coated aluminium glazing beads and butt up against each other. The curtain walling contractor, Scheldebouw supports the glass on timber blocks for 48 hours and the silicon sticks on the glazing beads sets. Matthews claims that this eliminates the slight depression effect of the double glazing units. (Martin, 2010)

Solar control

To achieve the building function and cool efficiently, the curtain wall design needed to be incorporated into the effective means of controlling the solar gain. The main solar control comes from the roller blinds in the ventilated inner cavity of the triple-glazed glass to reduce solar radiation by 95%. The resistance of the building to solar gain is measured by “G value” which for the average office is 0.34 when using double glazing. According to Arup’s Shard project manager, David Healy, by using triple glazing with intelligent motorised roller blinds control system which could track the position and intensity of the sun to deploy the blinds only when required, the G value at The Shard will be reduced by 0.12. thereby significantly

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