Glass Towers

[DarkRange55]

I always loved The Shard mirror tower from the game Mirror's Edge. Glass buildings always seem sleek and futuristic to me.

Curtain wall (architecture) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's for both aesthetic and practical reasons:

Aesthetically it looks stylish, and allows for a lot of options for colors and tinting. It also makes the offices inside more desirable when they have big windows with nice views and lots of natural light.

Practically glass is lighter and easier to install and maintain than a lot of other cladding materials. Glass isn't always windows. It makes a much better cladding for a building than the marble/granite facades of early skyscrapers. Easier maintenance (it's a pain to tuck-point a tall concrete/stone building). Skyscrapers also almost always carry their weight on internal support beams so structural strength isn't a big concern for the exterior walls. Skyscrapers are usually steel-framed: Steel and concrete is mainly because structural and seismic (and to less extent fire) codes. Usually the interior walls are all partisans. The columns are structural.

People like views from their offices and will pay more for a view than without.

What do you think? Do you like this design? There is a distinct bronze-colored glass tower in the neighboring city.

 

[LaVieEnRose]

I don't like them because I am a huge fan of throwing stones.

 

[VeryShy]

I do like glass towers, we have a few as of recently where I live.

 

[amnesia999]

Once upon a time, there was a king of a small African country whose subjects admired very much. It became the custom, every year, to make the king a new throne for his throne room on his birthday. The old ones were stored in a grass hut, larger than but typical of the grass huts everyone lived in. The collection made up a sort of throne museum.

One year, however, the celebrating townsfolk hauled last year's throne into the throne museum, only to have the floor of the hut collapse under the weight. One man was killed while several were injured, and the hut was a total loss.

The moral of this sad story: Those who live in grass houses, shouldn't stow thrones.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I like modern brutalist houses with lots of big windows but no, to look at, I'm not keen on glass sky scrapers. I prefer taller buildings with more shape to them- like the Chrysler building. I still admire the ingenuity behind them though. They're not so fun to work in if there's no air conditioning and you're not allowed to open the windows. It's like being baked inside a glass house!

 

[Tesha]

They can have some design issues..

'Walkie-Talkie' skyscraper melts Jaguar car parts

A new London skyscraper dubbed the "Walkie-Talkie" is blamed for reflecting light which melted parts of a car parked on a nearby street.

www.bbc.co.uk