Nick Shore, NSG Group

As legislative trends and market demands drive architects closer to the zero-carbon home, the pressure is on to ensure buildings are designed with energy-efficiency at their core. Every construction material is expected to demonstrate the most exceptional efficiency values possible.

Architects may particularly feel the strain when it comes to the glass that they use in windows. As they are pressured to find more and more energy efficient windows, the limits of what double-glazing can do will be reached. It’s in this context that triple-glazing has come to the fore. With three panes in each Insulating Glass Unit (IGU), triple-glazing offers unprecedented levels of thermal insulation, as well as a host of other benefits that have the potential to transform our cities’ carbon credentials.

But isn’t triple-glazing a bit overkill? A few years ago, it was viewed as the preserve of the Nordic extremes. While the benefits of converting from single- to double-glazing were clear, bulky triple-glazing units were often seen as a step too far; sacrificing too much natural light in the push for more efficient glazing.

Fortunately, this has all changed now. Advances in manufacturing techniques have made thinner, clearer panes of glass possible in recent years. With vacuum glazing products like Pilkington Spacia™ now readily available, triple-glazing units can even be created that are thinner than standard double-glazed windows – just 21mm thick. This means that modern triple-glazing can now be fitted to blend in seamlessly with almost any building façade, giving architects more freedom to specify triple-glazing without compromising on the appearance, clarity of view, or the amount of natural light entering a building.

So why is triple-glazing beginning to grow in popularity? In short; it offers unprecedented levels of thermal insulation, while preserving all of the traditional benefits of having windows. It enables stunning designs incorporating full-glass façades even in the coldest of winters.

Pilkington energiKare™ Triple used in a Passiv Haus renovation in London

The energy efficiency benefits of triple glazing are fairly simple – the more panes of glass, the less heat can escape. But the most effective triple-glazing units do much more. While blocking heat from escaping, they need to be effective at allowing as much solar heat gain (‘free energy’) from the sun as possible – a task made more difficult with three panes.

But it’s not just thermal insulation that makes triple-glazing such a versatile material for architects. Triple-glazing units (IGUs) contain six individual glass surfaces that can be coated with high-performance technology to enhance the window’s performance. For example, the outermost pane could be self-cleaning, while two of the inner panes are solar control and low-e coatings. The thicknesses of each pane can also be altered to improve safety, security and noise reduction performance.

So what about countries with cold winters but hot summers? From the outset it is important for architects to balance the ultra effective thermal insulation properties of triple-glazing with sufficient natural cooling systems in the buildings they design. Be it combining triple-glazing with the use of brise soleil – exterior structural shading – or simply making sure windows can be opened; the solutions are simple and the insulating benefits gained in winter will far outweigh the pause for thought when the plans are on the drawing board.

If I have one message to end on, it’s that triple-glazing isn’t scary. It has the potential to help transform our cities into the low-carbon hubs of tomorrow, and is fast becoming an essential material for the carbon-conscious architects of today. As it makes the switch from niche product to the mainstream, now is the time to understand the possibilities of triple-glazing.

Nick Shore is Sustainability Director for the NSG Group’s Building Products division. His remit is the creation and implementation of sustainability strategy to ensure it remains a core value at the heart of what the NSG Group does. The NSG Group is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of glass and glazing systems in three major business areas; Building Products, Automotive and Specialty Glass.

Steven Velegrinis, Woods Bagot

So, we are now living in world of seven billion people. In the 21st Century, population growth is one of the most significant contributors to the environmental and economic challenges facing the Earth. The Asian continent is at the forefront of this challenge as Asia is host to 70% of the world’s top ten mega/metacities. Considering projected population growth and urbanisation in China and India alone, it is likely that new urban development will need to accommodate between 900,000,000 and 1,200,000,000 people by 2050. That is just for India and China, based on current population and urbanisation predictions.

If we consider the global situation, the United Nations predicts that we will need to build enough new urban development for 3,300,000,000 people by 2050 (when 75% of the population will live in cities).

Over 50% of the global population currently live in cities and the vast majority are located in waterfront areas. In total 40% of the global population live within 100 kilometres of the coast and another approximately 45% of the human population live within 100 kilometres of inland waterfronts. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted sea level rises of five metres from current levels if we do not change our ways. The resulting crisis is clear for urban areas which have always gravitated to waterfronts.

Major urban conurbations like the 40 million people in the Pearl River Delta, 15 million people in Bangkok, 16 million people in the Mekong Delta and 8 million people in Dhaka are at significant risk of sea level rises.

In the environmental design professions we can no longer shrug our shoulders and assume that Climate Change is someone else’s problem. Our daily choice is now whether to be part of the problem or part of the solution. These challenges require a new approach to waterfront development which recognises and embraces the ecology of water and sea level change in master planning of waterfront developments.

Governments are increasingly paying serious attention to the issues of sea level change in urban planning. In Abu Dhabi the 2030 Masterplan establishes minimum platform levels for waterfront development at four metres above current mean sea level.

In Singapore the Public Utilities Board conducted the strategic ABC Waterways urban planning review of every waterbody, drain and reservoir in the country with a view to consolidating water resources, using waterbodies wisely and protecting water resources from rising sea levels.

At Woods Bagot we have attempted to recognise our responsibility to not just to avoid doing more damage but rather to improve the health of waterbodies in our master planning work. In projects like the Wuqing Masterplan in Tianjin, our plan addresses the non point-source pollution caused by agriculture and industry by restoring the river ecology and treating and returning wastewater to a river that was almost completely drained by irrigation schemes.

In the Middle East we have used the required establishment of raised platform levels to institute a hydraulic system that treats all wastewater on site through the landscape and creates additional mangrove habitat. In effect we are seeking to create development prompted by the simple question of ‘What if every act of design left the world a better place?’

While current approaches to sustainable development reduce the environmental harm caused by the construction and operation of new buildings, we need to go beyond reducing the impact of new development to creating buildings and places that contribute to the healing of compromised human and ecological systems. If not we risk becoming the captains on the bridge of sinking ships.

Steven Velegrinis is Urban Design Practice Leader at Woods Bagot. He grew up in Australia and pursued a career in Urban Planning & Heritage Conservation before embarking on a career in Landscape Architecture. After spending almost a decade in Asia, Steven moved to the Middle East four years ago and took up a position with Woods Bagot as their Urban Design Practice Leader for the Middle East. His recent work & PhD research seeks to promote the idea of Landscape Urbanism as the future for sustainable urban development in the Middle East and Asia

Nick Shore, NSG Group

40% of all the energy consumed in the EU is used in buildings. All this power, heating and cooling in turn accounts for a whopping 36% of total CO2 emissions across member states. This represents just the tip of the iceberg as part of a much broader global issue that we need to address.

Changing the way we generate energy is of course part of the answer; and in a future blog post we’ll look at the untapped potential of solar power. But a smarter move is simply to use less energy in the first place. And buildings are great places to start in making this happen.

How? By changing the way we think about energy, placing it at the heart of building design and construction, rather than the afterthought it can all too often be today. This entails looking at the very fabric of the buildings we are designing in a new light, and this is where it gets exciting.

Clever architectural design matched with innovative construction materials means it’s often possible to eliminate the need for energy hungry – not to mention increasingly expensive – heating and cooling technologies. Let’s look at the role of glass as just one example.

Pilkington Eclipse Advantage (with a blue tint) in action in the Al Fardan Towers, Doha

Take the Middle East for instance. With average highs of 35°C in countries such as Saudi Arabia, it’s impressive the region’s skyscrapers, glistening with all that glass, aren’t more like greenhouses than office blocks. In the past, keeping these buildings cool meant packing them with environmentally and financially costly air conditioning systems. Advances in glass technology, driven by R&D teams like ours at NSG, mean that coated, body-tinted and laminated glass ranges can now filter out the worst of the sun’s radiant heat. Using solar control glass in this way can also help control glare, which can be just as much of an annoyance as being too hot.

Of course, keeping buildings cool is not such a concern for architects working in colder climes. Here, ultra thin double-glazing, innovative triple-glazing and other insulating coated glass units are revolutionising the way buildings are constructed. Special thermal ranges like Pilkington Optitherm™ allow architects to design buildings that maximise the precious natural light and solar heat available, without letting heat escape. This is possible because the heat coming in and getting out are at different wavelengths, so we can design glass compositions and coatings that selectively pass or block one category and not the other.

Likewise, vacuum glazing options such as Pilkington Spacia™ mean that even the oldest period properties can be brought up to standard. The extremely thin glazing units provide great thermal insulation, but can still be fitted in old-fashioned window frames, maintaining the original appearance of traditional buildings. This is a key part of the mix, especially given the number of leaky old buildings dotted across Europe.

Products like Pilkington Spacia can be retrofitted to period properties, like this museum in Amsterdam

Yet it’s temperate regions in which the biggest challenge arguably lies. Countries with hot summers and cold winters cannot rely simply on solar control or insulating glass to reduce energy consumption. Huge strides forward in the glass industry have given architects unprecedented options for improved energy efficiency in buildings in these climates. Products like Pilkington Eclipse™ Advantage combine low emissivity with solar control properties; helping keep a building comfortable, and energy bills lower, all year round.

So glass can do far more than just keep the wind and rain out. It can drastically reduce CO2 emissions and monthly energy bills too and it pays to remember this when sitting down at the drawing board. We won’t be able to make all our building stock zero-carbon simply by changing the way we specify glass. But it’s certainly an important and smart place to start. What matters is that you don’t stop there.

Nick Shore is Sustainability Director for the NSG Group’s Building Products division. His remit is the creation and implementation of sustainability strategy to ensure it remains a core value at the heart of what the NSG Group does. The NSG Group is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of glass and glazing systems in three major business areas; Building Products, Automotive and Specialty Glass.

Ross Donaldson, Woods Bagot

For the first time in history, more than half of the world’s people live in cities, with nearly two billion new urban residents expected in the next twenty years; estimating that by 2050, 80% of the population will live in urban areas.

As cities grow at an ever-increasing speed, the road to realising urban environments that deliver high liveability value are becoming a challenge. In a report chartered by the Economist [Liveable Cities Challenges and opportunities for policymakers, The Economist] that investigates the latest thinking about urban liveability, there is a resounding call that a top-down model of urban planning is no longer appropriate, and that there is a desperate need to foster a more lateral approach to urban planning in order to help cities thrive. I agree.

Recently, I presented at the annual World Class Cities conference held in Istanbul, where the heart of my discussion paper and presentation lay in the underlying premise that social infrastructure is the lifeblood of a cities spirit. I strongly believe that investing and embedding social infrastructure such as schools, cultural institutions, health and places of worship that breathe life deep into the fabric of the city, not in separated precincts, into our dense urban environments and public space amenity, will enable our globe to embrace urbanism and drive the output of liveable cities for tomorrow.

In fact, so strongly was my interest in the relationship between social infrastructure and high liveability value, our team at Woods Bagot decided to embark on some research, ask some questions and provide, perhaps not concrete answers, but inexplicable links to the power that social infrastructure has, and plays in a city’s urban wellbeing – again, that notion of ‘liveability.’

As we did, come with us and let us cast our eyes across the globe. As we know it, the weaving of community infrastructure that is intricately linked to the greater cities framework, such as the High Line project in New York City, Florida’s Public Library System and Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum has spurred on ancillary development and proved to inject direct economic benefit.

The High Line has spurred an estimated US$2bn in ancillary development, including 2,500 apartment units and 12,000 jobs have been added to the economy since 2009. Similarly, the direct economic benefit of Florida’s Public Library System to organisations and individuals is estimated at US$6bn per annum.

Furthermore, the renowned Bilbao effect associated with Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum was in fact due to a comprehensive series of projects totalling over US$1.5bn including but not limited to, the Basque Public University Auditorium, KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Euskalduna Bridge.

So, what is this telling us you ask? The pursuit of modest scale community infrastructure rather than mega ‘star-architecture,’ has proved to be a successful formula for both New York, Florida, and Bilbao in spurring on economic prosperity, adding life and everyday experiences of local communities – truly elevating liveability for locals. Yet how do we achieve a true elevation of liveability for our cities across the globe?

A fundamental link to the success of our urban environments lies in the way in which the city is operated. Further research undertaken by Woods Bagot found that cities that perform consistently well in the index of liveability (as cited in the Liveable Cities Index, ‘The Economist Intelligence Unit’) also have governance mechanisms that allow these cities to implement infrastructure on a city-wide scale.

Hence, the key lies in the way in which the city is operated. Cities that have an interstitial layer of governance, where a metropolitan wide level of authority is solely responsible for a single city, enables appropriately planned community scale infrastructure that is unique to its sense of place.

On the surface perhaps it seems quite straight forward, however to this day, urban planning schemes continue to neglect the evidence of liveable cities – addressing issues that deal with the well being of inhabitants, the strength of a community and the increasing need of civic engagement. We continue to plan for precincts of social infrastructure often disconnected from, rather than integrated with the broader fabric of the city. Investing and embedding social infrastructure such as schools, healthcare, cultural institutions and places of worship that breathe life into our dense urban environments, will enable our globe to embrace urbanism and drive the output of liveable cities for tomorrow.

Ross Donaldson is a registered architect and urban planner with over 25 years of experience, with a wide range of involvement in architectural, urban design and community planning projects. He was the Director for the Education and Science Sector for Woods Bagot and in 2007 was appointed Managing Director for the Group.