Advances in glazing materials and glass building systems offer a seemingly unlimited horizon for not only glass performance, but also for the size and extent of these light, transparent forms. Both for enclosures and for indoor environments, novel products and assemblies allow for more glass and less opaque structure often in places that previously limited their use.
Boulder Community Health’s West Medical Building, with its hybrid vacuum-insulated glass installation and two inches of continuous rigid insulation, and the Lubber Run Community Center, Arlington, Va., with its "thermomass" insulated concrete walls, are among 14 projects to be recognized by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for their high-performance building envelope design.