New Glazing Technology for Buildings in Saint-Petersburg
At construction of Saint-Petersburg Bank Headquarters building at the Malookhtinskiy prospect, there was a new for the northern capital glazing technology applied. The bank is a major building in a new business quarter which will have been constructed by 2011.
The new quarter is a co-project by an alliance of Saint-Petersburg architecture bureau Evgeniy Gerasimov and Partners and design bureau NPS Tchoban Voss. Oleg Kaverin is the Russian developer’s senior architect.
The team of architects has a tough task to accomplish which is to design the new business quarter which would both meet the customer's expectations and effectually blend into the current urban environment. Besides, the complex is to supplement the local infrastructure, making conditions for the city district growth and prosperity.
According to the architects’ plan, office buildings of the new business complex are a group of three multi-height blocks looking foreside to the Maloohtinskaya naberezhnaya, forming a smart facade of the whole quarter. Saint-Petersburg Bank Headquarters building is the complex major building as it was planned.
The Bank 21-floor main office facade is a solid glass block. The total area of the tower glazing made more than twenty thousand square meters. There is a new for Saint-Petersburg glazing technology applied: element composed facade with leaded floor-to-ceiling panels. Large size of the elements – 4,500 õ 1,700 mm and 3,700 õ 1,500 mm – as well as the spherical outline of the facade, requiring graded flexure of glass panels, made glazers’ job more complicated.
10 mm tempered selective glass Stopray Vision by AGC Glass Europe was used for glazing the tower. Stopray glass can be used for any climate. This kind of glass combines a high degree of protection against sunlight at summer season and a considerable heat-insulating ability at winter time. In the double-cabinet glass units used for glazing all three glasses are tempered and extra heat treated. The given technology allows preventing spontaneous glass fracture due to possible presence of nickel-sulphide inclusions. A part of the glass units of the front was fixed by cold bending technology.
Estimating the fulfilled construction project, experts notice that the chosen glazing method applied makes the whole complex look consonant, and the construction quality of the object will significantly contribute to business activity abundance in this district of the city.