Ever since he was a little kid, Gizmo Guy always has
loved snooping around buildings under construction.
So he jumped at the chance to check out the shiny new
Saint-Gobain North American corporate headquarters in Malvern, where he was
promised insights into its high-tech building materials - the spécialité de
la maison.
And he learned that . . .
People in tightly sealed glass-walled buildings don't
have to throw stones (or put A.C. into high gear) to get comfortable on a hot
day.
Or shout to be heard, even in a wide-open floor plan.
Or fear for their health in said sealed environment.
Heavy with products made worldwide by Saint-Gobain and
its North American construction-materials subsidiary CertainTeed Corp., the new
headquarters at the 320,000-square-foot campus are a "living
laboratory," CEO John Crowe said, designed "to demonstrate the power
our products have to improve the quality of people's lives." (Alas, the
800-plus employees won't be getting a "guinea pig" bonus.)
Like that modernistic exhibit of edgy building shells
that Saint-Gobain put up on the Ben Franklin Parkway last summer, the timing of
the Malvern opening is symbolic, Crowe said, cued by the firm's 350th
anniversary.
Clearly, the firm has come a long way from King Louis XIV
- the fab dresser and amateur architect who kick-started the enterprise
(originally anointed La Manufacture royale de glaces) to snazz up his
Palace of Versailles with a shiny Hall of Mirrors.
Saint-Gobain didn't invent the process of coating heavy
glass with reflective layers of tin and mercury. But the French concern did
come up with a novel alternative to blown-glass mirrors, instead pouring the
molten material onto a metal table mold. That enabled the first "big
screen" mirrors - much to the entertainment of 17th- and 18th-century
"selfie" posers.
High-tech glass is still a big deal at the new
Saint-Gobain building, a onetime insurance company domain "stripped down
to the steel, then entirely rebuilt," Crowe said.
In a conference room, we took in a rendering of that
magically charged privacy glass ("polymer dispersed liquid
crystal-infused"), which shifts from see-through to opaque at the push of
a button.
Even more dramatic is the 17,000 square feet of
electronically tintable ("electrochromic") SageGlass on the western
and southern elevations of the façade. Triggered by the plant operations
computer, light-reactive sensors, a wall switch or even a cellphone, voltage is
applied to five ceramic layers (collectively 1/50 the thickness of a strand of
hair) embedded inside the glass, which then turn it different shades of gray.
Not 50, though it is possible to tame a piece of glass to reveal three
differently tinted bands within a single pane.
"On a hot day with sun overhead, you might have the
glass appear darkest at the top, medium gray in the middle and lightest at the
bottom. That would absorb and re-radiate the midday heat and cut the glare at
the top, while still allowing people to enjoy the light and outside
views," SageGlass CEO Alan McLenaghan said. It can tune out as much as
"91 percent of the heat while allowing in 99 percent of the light."
A retrofitable product that "pays for itself,"
SageGlass made "all the difference" in attracting room rentals after
being installed in the glass ceiling of the Hamilton Garden above the Kimmel
Center's Perelman Theater, said Saint-Gobain building scientist Lucas Hamilton.
"It was a space previously too hot to hold weddings
and other receptions on a sunny day," Hamilton said. "Now it's very
popular. Grooms especially like to go in and play with the controls, to dial in
the right lighting 'tone' for the happening."
What didn't catch our attention at Saint-Gobain was just
as important as what did - especially in a reception zone below vertically hung
Ecophon Focus Ds tiles. Made mostly of recycled spun glass with a plant-based
binder (ergo the "Eco"), these wavy panels aren't just pretty. They
also absorb sound and diffuse glare from overhead strips of LED lights.
"This material can really make the difference in an open floor plan like
ours or a classroom where different groups are huddled in different
areas," Crowe said. "You can talk at normal levels."
The right building materials can even take a stab -
literally - at airborne microbes that want to plant themselves on walls to
fester as fungus and black mold.
"To live, microbes need food - starch or sugar - and
need water," Hamilton said. "But, like a stool, if you knock out one
leg, the bad thing [microbe] falls over." So Saint-Gobain Adfors wall
coverings (sub-branded Novelio) pack synthetic derivative silver ions
"that make the food un-nutritious," he said. And, during
manufacturing, Saint-Gobain roughs up the texture of its gypsum wallboard and
drywall tapes with a "needle structure" that "scratches the
shells of the mold spores so the stuff dries up and dies."
Sounds like the happy ending to a scary movie.
Source: Philly.com
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