New Development In Building

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22628, 16 January 1937, Page 6 (Supplement)

New Development In Building

WH hitve often hoard of the people living in glass liAnses who should not throw stones. In America they will soon be an actuality, for an American paper records the steps taken to build a skyscraper of glass. At the south-west corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street Now York a business building entirely of glass construction, even to the floors, is to he constructed for the Corning Glass Works. The destruction of the oldfashioned building is already proceeding to make place for the new structure, which may mark the beginning of a new Now York, a city of glass towers. The building will be five stories and front twenty-seven feet on Fifth Avenue and 100 feet on Fifty-sixth Street. The facade will be built of glass blocks, each one foot square, separated by seams of lime Portland cement mortar onequarter of an inch wide, 'lhese great screens of glass will be set in a Irame of Indiana limestone, the only stone in the building visible to the public. As'the entrance to the building will ho on the side street, the entife Fifth Avenue frontage will be a pile of translucent glass. The strength of this glass house was. illustrated by a representative of the company, who said that a wall of these blocks could be constructed COO feet before the base would show the effect of the tremendous weight. The building will be sealed, so to speak. It will bo air-conditioned artificially, and the face of the completed structure ma.v he washed with a hose, dust and grime coming off as if it were a mirror. The architects said that it was their belief that the " glass construction

unit opens up possibilities of an entirely new conception of building design." It may be said that its development is as significant a step in the science of construction as the development of the steel frame. It lias freed the architect from the feeling of a wall as a solid opaque mass, which encloses his building, and throng's which he lias to punch holes for windows. He is now iible to think of his exterior wall as a screen, transmitting light. The scientifically designed opt ica I fluting is pressed on the inner walls of the block. The flutes run vertically on one wall and horizontally on the opposite. Although :tll images seen through the block are thus purposely obscured, 78 per cent of the light directed at the surface will be transmitted.