Bioclimatic Double-Skin Façades

Abstract

TA D 7 : 1 or triple glass units, unless comprehensive modeling is done to demonstrate that the building satisfies energy targets. Some of that backlash likely involved a rebellion against the postmodernist articulation of punched openings in curtain walls. However, the fascination with DSFs seems to have deeper origins than these historical conditions and precedents might suggest. Beginning with the mythical discovery of glass under a sailor’s fire on a beach, glass has been the subject of fascination because of its phenomenal properties (Pliny the Elder 1963). Glass has the same relationship with light as water, metal, and crystals; it can be transparent, reflective, or both together; it is a liquid and a solid and casts only ephemeral shadows like air. Mies’s exploration of transparency was formed in opposition to the quasi-occult speculations of the Expressionists around Bruno Taut and Paul Scheerbart, often discounted as steps to proper modern transparency. The contemporary valorization of transparency, which can signal political or institutional openness and even progress itself, only partly conceals the enduring interest in luminous reflections. It could be the power of glass to simultaneously reveal and conceal that keeps the fascination with DSFs alive. Properly understood, DSFs are just a transparent mechanism for capturing and moving heat. Ductwork and HVAC equipment hold no such fascination, but a transparent enclosure serving the same function becomes a technical marvel.