Building energy regulations worldwide are increasingly advocating for better-insulated facades since improved insulation in facades can significantly reduce a building’s heating energy demand. However, research indicates that super-insulated buildings are already at risk of overheating due to high internal heat storage and low heat loss. In addition, over the past decades, the climatic trend demonstrated a significant rise in surface temperatures. As a result, well-insulated commercial buildings have become increasingly dependent on cooling. On the other hand, approximately 85% of Europe’s glazing comprises single glazing and uncoated double glazing. This prevalence leads to high demand for heating and cooling energy. Therefore, there is an urgent need to enhance the insulation of these buildings’ glazing while maintaining the existing window frames. A glass unit prototype with switchable insulation has been developed and assessed to address these issues. The findings of this thesis demonstrate that in mixed climate zones, the utilization of switchable insulation can lead to a reduction in total energy demand by as much as 33% compared to the use of present high-performance glazing technologies. When advantageous, Inflatable Glazing can be activated on-demand or controlled by internal and external sensors. The heat transfer coefficient of the facade, known as the U-value, can be switched from a low insulating value to a high conducting value. During the cooling period, this technology can be employed to increase the heat flux of the glass unit, thereby enhancing heat dissipation. Conversely, Inflatable Glazing can provide excellent insulation and highly effective solar gain during the heating period. This thesis investigates the potential of a switchable insulating glass unit for buildings in mixed and mild climate zones, where selecting the appropriate U-value can be complex. The focus is set on building and testing a fully transparent glass unit with a switchable U-value. The innovative material, thin glass, serves as the primary dynamic component due to its advantageous bending properties and strength.

The climate is changing and to deal with this climate change, adaptations have to be made to the way we live. This research focusses on a particular site in Rotterdam Zuid in terms of climate change. The research question is the following: How can both- social and hard infrastructure contribute to the creation of a climate proof, resilient community? This question will be answered in the form of a building. Starting with a research about the climate change that has to be dealt with in Rotterdam Zuid. As a group we defined a new vision for the area and we all designed one building that contributes to that vision. In this case solutions for climate change contribute to the vision. This research about the location determined the location of the intervention. After this a research is done into the subject social infrastructure, changing the habits of people from an individual mindset to a communal mindset. This can save lives during a disaster. This research determined the target groups and the function. The elderly and the children and the function should be a combination between an aid organization and a communal center. The Red Cross Social Center. Then a reference research started, different types of communal centers and red cross headquarters have been analysed to come up with a program bar for the project. Along with the program bar, different ambitions have been established in terms of function, site and design. Having all these guidelines set the massing could start. After trial and error the final massing has been established. A rectangular shaped building with a courtyard in the middle. The courtyard can be reached through a large (water)square which creates passages underneath the building. The large green roof is connected to the ground floor to make it accessible to the public to reach the second floor. The ground floor, second floor, third floor, and fourth floor contain public functions for people to establish this social connection, this social infrastructure. On the first floor the headquarters of the Dutch Red Cross is placed. This location and the design of the building will increase their visibility. The aim of the design was to create a building that deals with climate change in terms of hard- and social infrastructure. The hard infrastructure is achieved by various interventions. The social infrastructure is a more difficult topic, the building offers the ideal circumstances for people to create this social infrastructure themselves and create this resilient community.

Glass buildings seem to be as popular as ever (Louter, 2011) and glass shapes the appearance of contemporary architecture unlike any other building material (Wurm, 2007). Moreover, the demand for glass buildings is rising (Eskilson, 2018). As designers look to make the buildings as transparent as possible, the ambition is to execute structural elements out of glass too. Glass has always been perceived as luxurious and through history has been associated with knowledge, modernity, quality engineering and technological progression. Additionally, glass architecture has always been a signifier of public identity (Eskilson, 2018). These characteristics are still true for modern glass buildings, which is part of people’s fascination with them. In the foreseeable future, to be able to keep captivating people the ‘marvels’ for the average urban viewer should be greater and kept fresh. This is why more variety should be added to the architectural expression while the current characteristics of glass elements should be kept or even enhanced. Another reason for adding new elements to the toolkit is to simultaeniously keep up with building requirements like safety and sustainability. Combined this is why the toolkit for architectural glass needs to be expanded upon to be able to keep up with future building requirements and expectations. A structural element would be a promising addition to the current toolkit because of the already great variety of non-structural elements and the ambition to make more structures transparent. A section-active structural glass element would be a promising addition to the current toolkit because these structural elements are implemented especially often and there is a lack of variety here specifically. To design this section active structural glass element from extruded glass would be promising because the extrusion process allows for complex geometry beneficial to the aesthetic experience and also the structural performance. Another benefit of this process would be that the borosilicate glass used for this is much more fire resistant than the glass used for structural fins (O’Regan, 2015). The research question thus is: what is the potential of section-active extruded glass structural elements for architectural design? To answer this question a design vocabulary is set out in three different design aspects: system, section, and connection. After designing principle solutions the best option is chosen through assessments. The assessment of all parts of the design at all stages will be done following the same criteria. For the criteria a wide perspective was chosen that includes the entire cycle of the element’s lifetime: safety, structural performance, building sequence, sustainability, costs, and aesthetics. After assessments, it is decided on a system comprising of individual post-tensioned segments of elliptical shaped glass section with steel cast connections, bolted together on site. The system is designed as modular, re-usable and recyclable. This draft design is dimensioned through hand calculations and numerical simulations in finite element analysis software. To evaluate the potential of the dimensioned system for implementation in architecture, it is compared to the glass fin which is its only direct competitor. In order to offer a fair comparison the same façade is designed with both systems. The conclusion of this comparison is that the designed system has a promising potential for architectural implementation with regards to structural performance, safety, building sequence, sustainability, and aesthetics. Obviously additional physical testing is needed to affirm estimations and more research has to be done should it be developed to a market-ready product. The exact costs are unclear too as no equipment exists at this point to produce the extruded glass segments in the required dimensions. The tooling costs will be high but the material costs are low, making it especially viable when mass-produced as products with standard dimensions. Summarizing the comparison the first indications and explorations necessitate to think positively towards the possibilities of such an extruded system for architecture.

A building manager of a small monument in Alkmaar wants to give the monument a new function as a restaurant. His idea is to place a glass structure over his monument, like a huge cheese bell, in Alkmaar as a famous cheese city. The main question that is central in this research is: “How can a full glass dome structure be built, to cover ‘Het Kruithuisje’ in Alkmaar, The Netherlands, in which the thermal comfort is maintained in the most passive manner, without impeding the visual benefits of glass?”. To answer this question this research is divided into four parts: literature, designs, analysis and final design and conclusion. Various coarse designs will be made that will be analyzed. Based on the analyzed designs, a final design can be made in which the structural performance and thermal comfort are known. These results will lead to a design with building plans that can ultimately be built, with guidelines, recommendations and conclusions for possible upcoming similar structures. A dome structure, or a cupula structure, is a form of shell structures. A shell structure is a structure where the surface can bear the loads, because the surface is shaped and supported in a certain way (Flügge, 1973). Glass can be used as a construction material, but it has a number of properties as standard that are not entirely suitable for a construction material. To make glass a safer construction material and to give it a greater bearing capacity, it must be strengthened. The dome is a suitable shape for constructing glass structures because most of the internal dome forces are in compression. A shell structure can be built in as a completely smooth surface or built from various separate components. To build this entire construction, the shape must be divided into panels. To approximate the dome shape hot bended double curved panels will be used. To be able to build with glass, connections are needed between the various glass components. (Santarsiero et al., 2016). To achieve high transparency and low peak voltages, a combination of adhesive connections and dry assembly connections can be used. Designing with glass creates problems, especially for thermal comfort problems. These problems can be easily solved by using a lot of energy, which is not a sustainable solution. With passive strategies, a large part of this requested energy can be removed. In order to take away as much energy as possible in a passive manner, there must be compromised on transparency.

The presented project concerns the design concept and process, as well as the preceding methodologies for the development of an architectural intervention in the Rotterdam South. Main notion of the project is the idea of permanent transition in the architectural and urbanistic realms. The concept of migration is used as the starting point for the project. Migration can be understood as a dynamic process from the perspective of the moving object, or idea; however, it may also be a study of change of factors in the given area. In order to enclose this definition within urban context, it can be said that the migration is the multiplication of the architectural idea with variable alterations in time and space. It is necessary to analyze permeability in the search of the solution for the temporality balance. The city of Rotterdam is used as the case study for this research, because it allows for a valid description and evaluation of all processes ongoing in the migration mechanism. With the resultant findings, based on literature studies and site analysis, a design brief is defined, with a subsequent concept. The intervention resolves the urban borders, allowing for the connection of the surrounding neighborhoods. Hence, a high degree of permeability is achieved with the use of introductory and reoccurring temporalities.

Glass structures have been dominating in the architectural world for the past decades, unveiling the material’s structural potential. Advancements in glass manufacturing and post-processing techniques have not only led to innovative applications but also resulted in the development of unique glass products. Aluminosilicate glass exhibits superior strength and flexibility compared to the commonly used soda lime glass, due to its distinct composition and manufacturing process. This enables the production of ultra-thin glass with thicknesses as low as 25 μm, giving rise to the category of "thin glass" encompassing any glass below 2 mm in thickness. Thin glass has found applications in industries such as automotive and electronics due to its unique properties, including optical clarity, scratch resistance, durability, flexibility, and reduced weight. In architecture, the evolving design vocabulary embraces complex geometries and the integration of curved panels, offering clear structures that provide exceptional optical clarity and blend seamlessly with their surroundings. Thus, thin glass holds potential for creating complex, lightweight, and transparent architectural structures. This research addresses the limitations of thin glass in construction and explores optimal bending techniques to maximize its capabilities. The methodology comprises a literature review of the glass industry, design principles, and an in-depth study of thin glass properties. This study culminates in the establishment of design guidelines and a computational approach to assist the design process while using cold bent thin glass. After investigating the available and most used design and structural simulation software, the ones found more accurate are integrated in the process. The findings highlight the successful development of a computational method that provides tools, design principles, and guidelines for working with single curved cold bent thin glass panels. Additionally, the research examines suitable connection types for thin glass projects and concludes with a proposal for a hinge clamp connection. A case study showcases the proposed workflow, leading to the creation of a prototype utilizing a 3d-printed based approach of the suggested connection design. The conclusions emphasize the significance of the integrated computational design workflow and its implications for architectural design using thin glass.

From carriages to cars, from steam engine trains to HS trains, the modes of mobility has been changing through the time. Mobility as become more and more relevant to people’s daily life and also plays an important role in city planning. With the rapid development of mobility modes, more facilities are also needed to fulfill a complete transportation network. Nowadays, more and more infrastructures such as highways, railways, are built to connect different districts. These infrastructures are usually built elevated from the ground and create a large amount of leftover spaces underneath. Various problems such as lowquality space, divisions in urban planning, and safety issues will arise because of these leftover spaces. Therefore, my research question becomes: How to activate the leftover spaces caused by infrastructures in public places? From the researches, to activate leftover space, four aspects need to be paid extra attention to. The primary aspect is accessibility, which is the capability and opportunity of leftover spaces to be reached and entered. The second aspect is diversity, the fact of many different types of atmosphere, activities, people can be included into the leftover space. This aspect could attract users to these spaces while allowing them to stay. Thirdly, inclusivity, which is the capability of including people from all groups, especially vulnerable groups such as children, elderly people, and disabled people, and treat them all fairly and equally. By improving inclusivity, it could allow leftover space to be used by people from different groups. The final aspect is reconnection, which is to link the leftover spaces together and reconnect with the city and become part of the urban planning. In this study, Tarwewijk district in Rotterdam South was selected as the site for designing a new mobility hub to solve the leftover space problem at site, while targeting to increase the four elements of leftover space from the research outcome.By comparing the research and design, this thesis can provide a new perspective for rethinking the characteristics of leftover space and provide could further a new methodology for activating the leftover spaces in other districts as well.

In the current built environment, the three main glass elements are glass window blocks, (structural) float glass and (structural) glass bricks. Float glass is the most used type of glass element and it is evolving from a skin material to a structural material. Glass hollow blocks became popular in the 1930s, but have lost their appeal due to little structural capacity and outdated aesthetics. A new and upcoming technique is the usage of cast glass bricks, which provides high structural performance without the use of substructures. The 21st century is unmistakably characterized by climate change and the effort being put into the battle against it. It is the duty of engineers to design in a sustainable way. ‘Sustainable’ can be interpreted in many ways; the focus within this paper lies on the usage of recycled materials, the recyclability of the final product and the energy usage during the lifespan of the façade (linked to thermal performance). When looking at the material itself, glass is a very recyclable material. This is widely done for glass bottles. However, the recyclability of float glass is very limited. Windowpanes and structural glass panes both consists of several layers of glass, combined with a PVB interlayer. Mostly, these combined panes are themselves processed further into insulated glass units, or IGUs. This end product consists of many different materials, that are hard to separate and for this reason, IGUs are seldom recycled at this moment. Additionally, not only the end product is rarely recycled, little recycled material is used for the production of float glass. The tolerances for using waste cullet in the production of float glass is very limited. Since the lifecycle cannot easily be changed for float glass, it is interesting to look into cast glass. The production technique is different from the production of float glass. Glass is melted into a mould, rather than spread along a bath of tin. The latest research shows the possibilities of using glass cullet and thus casting waste glass. One opportunity that arises from this, is the development of waste glass bricks. One main problem of cast glass bricks is its thermal performance. Due to the lack of cavities, as present in IGUs or hollow glass bricks the thermal performance is not optimal, especially with the increasing need for high-performing facades to meet sustainability demands. There are several strategies to improve the thermal performance of glass structures. The most simple solution for reducing the thermal transmittance is the introduction of air pockets or cavities. Air is a relatively good insulator, especially in small confined geometries. Convection reduces the thermal resistance of air and the bigger the air pocket, the more convection can occur. Not only air can provide insulation, this can also be done with other materials. Inert gasses, like argon and krypton, have a lower thermal conductivity than glass, but are more costly and would require a more complex production process to fill the cavity and to ensure complete sealing. Translucent solutions can be achieved with materials like aerogel and glass fibres. Light transmittance is still present, but the result is not transparent. If transparency or translucency is completely ignored, traditional insulation materials, like rock wool and polystyrene, could increase the thermal resistance too. Improvements can also be made with either reducing the amount of as long-wave, infrared energy going through the glass utilizing coatings or by reducing the conductivity of the glass itself by changing the molecular build-up. The glass recipe influences the thermal conductivity. This thesis focuses on the thermal performance of cast glass bricks and in specifically the investigation of the impact of cavities on the thermal performance and the development of a relevant production method for cavity cast glass bricks. Air cavities can be added on either system-level or element-level. On a system-level, the design of a singular brick does not change, but the typology in which it is used does. Cavity walls with either a double brick wall or with an additional float glass wall will improve the thermal performance but will utilize a lot more material. When changing the geometry of the brick itself, one or more cavities can be introduced to improve the performance. Since smaller cavities have a relatively better performance, multiple small cavities will automatically perform better than a singular larger cavity. Several designs are drawn, varying from a single or double cavity to an arrangement of glass shards, providing lots of encapsulated air pockets. Thermal bridges within a design influence the overall thermal performance. The heat will choose the path with the least resistance, which is via the glass. It is possible to lengthen the path that the heat must undertake, by introducing multiple air chambers and increasing the overall thickness of the brick. This increased thickness will also aid the structural performance. Creating multiple air pockets is directly linked to many glass-air transitions and thus a more complex geometry and production process. Producing such a brick with current standard manufacturing techniques would require glue. Glueing is not very environmentally friendly. The glue is not easily (if not impossible) to remove and therefore the final product is not recyclable. With experimental research, the potential of tack fusing glass is highlighted. This ‘tack fusing’ is done at a temperature below the actual fusing temperature, where the glass still creates a permanent bond, without relaxation and shape loss. This temperature lies around the dilatometric softening point of the specific glass type. The potential of the tack fusing method is explored employing shear tests of fused specimens. Three types of specimens are tested: two different series of tack fused specimens at 650˚C (1hr, 3hr dwell at top temperature) and one series of glued samples (DELO 4468) to be used as a reference. DELO4468 is a high-performance glue, which is mostly used for its high strength. Nine design concepts are drawn, based on a solid brick of 200x200x100 mm. Seven element-based designs are limited within these boundaries since increased thickness (even with only glass) would lead to higher thermal performance. Two system-level alternatives are not in-depth researched but are still examined as reference. These two alternatives cannot be kept within these boundaries and are thus at increased depth of the finished wall. All nine designs are scored in a multi-criteria analysis. The main focus is the thermal performance and therefore the thermal transmittance of each design needs to be analysed. This is for eight out of nine designs done with TRISCO, a steady-state 3D thermal analysis software. The last design, a fused shard brick, consisting of a random arrangement of random-shaped shards and is not easily modelled in 3D software. For this reason, it is not analysed in TRISCO but analysed through an experimental analysis. This experiment replicates a situation in which one side of the brick is warmer than the other while measuring the temperatures and heat fluxes. With these measurements, the thermal transmittance can be estimated. The last part of this thesis is the multi-criteria analysis, or MCA, in which all alternatives are scored against several criteria. One of these criteria is the thermal performance, others are sustainability, producibility, aesthetical potential and transparency. The sustainability is scored against several checks, related to the recyclability and the required temperature for production. The producibility and the aesthetical potential is scored utilizing a small expert survey. Both criteria are subjective of nature, but by including the opinion of several experts, the outcome is inter-subjective. The transparency is scored regarding the number of refractive surfaces (because with each air-glass transition visibility is lost due to reflections) and the percentage of non-transparent materials in the cross-section. The result of this thesis is not a single design, but insights in the potential of each concept. All designs are not ready for direct application but would require further structural verification and thermal optimisation, depending on the governing thermal requirements. There is not one perfect solution since each façade has different performance requirements, but the results do provide insights for an improvement from the current technologies.

To reduce the heat loss in heritage buildings, this graduation research aims to explore what alternative solutions arise when thin glass is used to design an insulating glass panel that replaces the single glazing? To do so, six different designs are proposed. The first two are an IGU with thin glass and laminated thin glass. The third design is made with a hollow twin-wall sheet of PC and laminated to thin glass. The fourth and fifth proposal are laser cut PMMA connected to thin glass. While design four uses a honeycomb pattern, the fifth proposal experiments with a more freely design of cavities. The last proposal uses glass balls in the cavity of the IGU. Based on the computer analysis, design 5 and 6 fail on the thermal properties and design 1 and two cannot handle the wind load. For design 1, 2, 3 and 4 prototypes are made but design 4 did not succeed during this research. The others were then tested on the U-value and the maximum force before breakage. This concluded that design 3 performed thermally as expected but design 1 and 2 performed worse, due to a flaw in the computer modelling. Converting the force to the maximum distributed load showed that all designs could handle the wind load. The materials were also tested on ageing due to UV rays. Only the polycarbonate changed significantly over ten years, but with an extra UV-coating, this is avoidable. The aesthetic of the design 3 and 4 and the opinion of the public are tested with a survey. It can be said that the division between design 3 and 4 was fifty-fifty. If the other design had a better U-value, they did not switch. Depending on the function of the space behind it, people chose design 3 for more private spaces and design 4 for more public spaces. To show the final appearance and precision of the designs, a rendering and details are given. After this, a table is made to compare the designs based on stars which concludes that design 2 is the best alternative solution to replace single glazing in heritage buildings.

Glass is a fascinating material that has also been used as a primary construction material in various remarkable buildings since the last century. Unfortunately, a lot of carbon dioxide is released during the production of glass because of the extreme heat required. The construction industry accounts for ten per cent of global CO2 emissions. If a focus in this sector is put on recycling, reducing and reusing, emissions can be drastically reduced because of less needed new building material. However, structural glass is currently hardly reused. A second challenge arises with existing demountable structures made of glass like the LocHal: these are not weatherproof, thus unsuitable as sheltered accommodation. In response to the absence of adequate standardised structural glass building systems, this research project proposes a preliminary design for a modular, transportable art pavilion with an appropriate structural verification. The research question is therefore: ’How can glass be applied as load‐bearing material in temporary modular building units to realise easy‐to‐ (dis)assemble, transparent and transportable structures?’. A case‐study is introduced to find an answer to the main research question. The fictive scenario is sketched to design a temporary art pavilion which stands for one to three months in a city centre in the Netherlands. After this period, the pavilion should be demounted and transported to the next destination. The information described here determines the boundary conditions for the design and calculations. The imaginary pavilion is 24 m in length, 10 m in width and 2.5 m in height. The inner walls in the pavilion are retained to create a natural walking path inside. On the short side of the pavilion, doors are inserted as an entrance and an exit. From the available literature, the transportability of the building elements and the requirement for thermal insulation appear to be important preconditions for the final design. The design is based on four different types of prefabricated building elements: roof panels, wall panels, floor panels and base profiles. The roof panels are of 220 mm thick cross‐laminated timber (CLT), in length six or three metres and have a width of 2.5 m. The wall panels are of laminated glass, 2.5 m in height and come in two types. Insulated glass units (IGU’s) of 6 or 5 m long function as exterior walls. These consist of an outer sheet of 10 mm fully tempered glass, a 15 mm cavity of 90% argon gas and a triple laminated inner panel of 5.10.5 mm heat‐strengthened glass. The inner walls are of a composition of 5.10.5 mm heat‐strengthened glass. The glass is laminated with a SentryGlas® interlayer of 1.52 mm. CLT is also used for the floor panels, now with a thickness of 210 mm and lengths of 6 and 3 m. The base is defined by steel ’cap’ (RHSFB, lengths of 6 and 5 m) and ’hat’ (THQ, length of 4.25 m) profiles. Both profiles are 265 mm in height. Roof connections, wall connections and base connections were designed and dimensioned, in total seven different types. The most innovative and structurally interesting joints are two wall connections. These connections consist of a so‐called ’coffee‐ cup‐hand’ system; titanium elements laminated 30 mm into the middle sheet of the wall panels. The wall panels are checked on maximum deflection and tensile stress, as well as the local tensile stress in the glass and in the SentryGlas® interlayer around the laminated titanium elements. All checks comply with the maximum allowable values described in the Eurocodes and in literature. The conclusion is that the proposed design, with some enhancements to be made, satisfies the structural‐, building physics‐ and practical requirements as a transportable and a relative transparent building system for structural glass. With this building system, glass can be integrated as a load‐bearing material for designs of temporary structures. Engineers who wish to apply this building system in practice are advised to first enhance the roof connections. For transportation means, the grid‐measurements should be decreased by 8% to fit the components in a regular container. For practice, it is also advised to deal with factors such as installations and drainage systems, which were not included in this study. Follow‐up research could focus on the adaptability of the building system when the building is used with a more permanent function. In addition, it is mechanically interesting to further investigate how the wall connections interact with each other in a 3D analysis and lab experiments.