verlander
New Member
You all may be correct, there may be others who beat 1BE to the 'curtain wall' punch. This would be great as it would seem that some amount of curtain wall inertia is already sweeping the local condo scene.
I should be clearer though - many projects use curtain wall at the ground level to spruce up the street level view of the building, then switch to the cheaper window wall system for the bulk of the building above (the Murano, for example).
I know the 550 Wellington project also uses curtain wall, but only for the hotel portion of the building on Bathurst Street. For those who are curious about the difference between curtain wall and window wall, this is a great example. Take a look at the Bathurst facade versus the rest of the 550 Wellington building and you will see curtain wall's potential for elegance vs. the mundane window wall cladding.
Curtain wall by-passes the slab edges for a continuous unbroken envelope while window wall can only span a relatively limited height and must 'sit' on every floor slab... this may not sound like a great difference, but in practice curtain wall is amazingly flexible and customizable while window wall is a very rigid and unyielding system.
The irony of the two systems is that window wall is a more complicated system than curtain wall to fabricate and install but costs significantly less.
I should be clearer though - many projects use curtain wall at the ground level to spruce up the street level view of the building, then switch to the cheaper window wall system for the bulk of the building above (the Murano, for example).
I know the 550 Wellington project also uses curtain wall, but only for the hotel portion of the building on Bathurst Street. For those who are curious about the difference between curtain wall and window wall, this is a great example. Take a look at the Bathurst facade versus the rest of the 550 Wellington building and you will see curtain wall's potential for elegance vs. the mundane window wall cladding.
Curtain wall by-passes the slab edges for a continuous unbroken envelope while window wall can only span a relatively limited height and must 'sit' on every floor slab... this may not sound like a great difference, but in practice curtain wall is amazingly flexible and customizable while window wall is a very rigid and unyielding system.
The irony of the two systems is that window wall is a more complicated system than curtain wall to fabricate and install but costs significantly less.
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