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The Ruskin House: Curtainwall |
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Right: The main wall facing the bay
The glazing system is a cypress framed glass curtainwall system with Stainless Steel brackets and connectors.
Below: Sketch/design drawing of the reinforcing “truss” for the 18’ tall vertical supports for the main space curtainwall. The verts span from the floor to the underside of the GluLam mains and if they were only cypress 2x’s they would have to be 2x26” beams. The solution is to make a truss using a cypress 2x10 and they make a tension chord on each side of the cypress for positive and negative pressures acting on the surface.
The system for these main verticals is not unlike a sailboat mast and uses 316L stainless steel rod, pipe, and plate. |
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. . . forge ahead . . . |
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The Ruskin House: Curtainwall |
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The key to the 18’ vertical truss mullion is the end connections that transfer loading to the floor plane and to the GluLam beams & into the roof diaphragm. These are fabricated of 1/8”x2” 316L Stainless Steel flat bar. |
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Above: the head connection for the verticals that die into the upper curved roof. |
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Above: 1”IGU to 1”IGU “void” corner detail.
Another detail to solve is the glass “void” corners. As with the steel rails, the corners are not “capped” and are void, unless they are made with the “shell” masonry system. So, while it’s fairly simple when you have just two pieces of 1/4” tempered glass to make a corner, one simply leaves an 1/8” gap between the two sheets at the corner and fill it with clear silicone. This works fine with two non-insulated lites as well as with one insulated, one single pane, but when you have two lites of insulated glazed units (IGU’s), a better solution (above) is to use a black anodized aluminum square tube with square corners and leave an 1/8” gap between the IGU ends and the tube, then seal w/ clear silicone. |
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Above: detail of 1/4”tempered to 1”IGU (1/4T to 1/4T similar)
Right: 1/4”tempered to 1/4” tempered at NE corner.
Right Above: Near corner, 1”IGU to 1/4” tempered corner at NW. The far right of that photo is the SW corner which is 1”IGU to 1” IGU. |
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Above: Detail of the head connection for the curtainwall verticals. The number of screws is dependent on the loading of each member.
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One of the unintended effects of the twisted wall was the twisting reflections on the black stained concrete floor . . . quite satisfying . . . |
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The Ruskin House: Curtainwall |
