Tinted Glass
There have been a lot of comments about the red brick and how great it looks. What I have not seen is any response to the green tinted glass that is being installed. Am I the only one who doesn't like it? Didn't sales models and renderings suggest clear glass being used?
There was an interesting article by the architecture critic Lisa Rochon in the Globe and Mail about a year ago. I found a copy of it on her
personal website. Here are some excerpts:
... Title: Tinting the sky to death one tower at a time
... Subtitle: Ubiquitous green glass has doomed our city buildings to darkness
... A sickly green patina has washed over the glass towers of our cities.
... It is the awful colour of hospital corridors and encroaching disease. Green-tinted glass has metastasized from Vancouver to Toronto to New York to Shanghai, dumbing down the exhilarating potential of the skyscraper, mortifying the skyline.
... Quoting James Carpenter, a New York-based glass designer: "Green glass has absolutely no response to the sky. These towers are occupying the sky plane, but, because they have a very distinct colour of their own, they don't have much of a reflectivity to them. They're really quite dead."
... Tinted glass is cheaper to buy than other clearer, crisper glass. That's because the glass that has swept the condominium market contains high levels of iron oxide, an impurity that exists in sand. The more iron you add to the glass the greener it becomes and the greater its ability to stop the transmission of infrared rays from the sun. The tint allows for the redirection of heat out of the building.
... Tinted glass, which typically transmits only about 15 per cent of natural light, got kick-started in the 1970s as a response to the energy crisis. So, while it became less expensive to heat buildings, the green glass required far greater use of artificial lighting to compensate for the near elimination of natural daylight.
... The challenge these days is to express an architecture that is not only technologically advanced but enticing to the eye. A popular device these days, coloured spandrels inserted horizontally into a glass curtain wall is a nice touch, but it's hardly interactive. For works of transcendence in glass look to American architect Steven Holl, just appointed to design, with Canadian associates Bortolotto Design Architect, a district energy building to fuel the new West Donlands neighbourhood in Toronto.
... Take away the tint of the glass tower and we start to see the sky for what it is: a changing, subtle landscape. Heavy with weather, inspiration and difference.