CONTEMPORARY MATERIALS GLASS AND ALUMINIUM COMPOSITE PANELS

Why glass is the red-hot building material designers have found that glass fits nicely into today’s Green building environment therefore glass may be the greenest building material available today.Why? It controls light, letting in the good rays and keeping out the bad ones, it saves on energy costs, providing natural day lighting and it harmonizes a structure with its environment. Glass is the only material you can see the sun, moon and the sky. Self Cleaning Glass is glass which has an extremely smooth and clean surface which does away with the requirement of regular cleaning. Though an accidental discovery, in an ancient kiln in the Mediterranean region, almost 4,000 years ago, it is the seemingly unlimited versatility of glass that has captivated and captured the imagination of mankind, ever since. Almost 2,000 years after its discovery, glass was made into thin sheets, which were strong enough to be used as windows. And this was probably the beginning of a very fruitful relationship between construction and glass. Architects are using glass as a new conceptual language in architecture and are still being developed and explored.An eminent poet and novelist Paul Scheerbart writes, We live for the most part in closed rooms. These form the environments from which our cultures grow. Our culture is to a certain extent the product of our architecture. If we want our culture to rise to a higher level we are obliged for better or worse to change our architecture, and this only becomes possible if we take away the closed character from the rooms in which we live. We can do that by introducing glass architecture, which lets in the light from the sun, moon and the stars, not merely through a few windows but through every possible wall that will be made of natural glass. The new environment which we thus create must bring a new culture. That is probably the reason why this, clear, transparent and versatile material, glass is fast gaining popularity as a building material for both interiors and exteriors.Several reasons are attributed for the increasing use of glass in the fields of both interior decoration and construction. Though the use of glass for building exteriors has become very popular, especially in the commercial building sector, it has not picked up in the domestic sector. Though the use of glass furniture, partitions and French windows are very popular in the latter. Safety glass, which is ordinary clear glass, which is treated in many different ways to make it safe, is gaining steady popularity simply for the range in which it is available and the versatility with which it can be used. The first reason of course is safety. Though it is very difficult to break, if it does break due to high impact, only small fragments without any sharp edges, which are harmless, are formed. Unlike ordinary float glass, which forms sharp knife like fragments when it breaks. Laminated Glass is strongly recommended for skylights or sloped glazing applications. It also resists intrusions because the PVB interlayer continues to safeguard the building even after the glass is broken.’