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5 Amazing Examples of Glass in Architecture
There’s many a glass building around the world. They start off as small greenhouses in the back garden of a pensioner in back-country Wales, then in terms of glass buildings they’ll go up to a conservatory or to a lesser extent an orangery and then you get on to the stupidly big buildings in the cosmopolitan parts of towns and city centres.
Well, it’s these bigger buildings that we’re going to look at. There’s hundreds of glass buildings around the world that are quite simply, astounding feats of architecture and craftsmanship.
The following list will only contain, simply the best and biggest glass buildings from around the world. Let’s start with some of the more common buildings.
The Louvre Pyramid
This iconic building, in Paris, France is part of the Louvre museum. The Louvre Pyramid is one of the most iconic buildings in Europe. In 1984, the then French president Francois Mitterrand hired architect, I.M. Pei to design and construct a new entrance for the museum.
The result of I.M. Pei being hired was the Louvre pyramid. The somewhat large pyramid rises out of the square in front of the Louvre Palace at a height of 70 feet and it consists of a quite staggering 673 glass sections from the to the top.
It was also made a little more famous by the Tom Hanks movie, The Da Vinci Code. Just in case you recognised it and never realised why.
“A modern Egyptian pyramid…” Image Source – landarchs.com
30 St. Mary Axe
From this title, you may have no idea what building this is. Well, it’s a building that’s more commonly known as the “Gherkin”.
It was built in 2003 and is one of the newest on this list but not the newest. The building was designed by Sir Norman foster who was also the man behind the design of the new Wembley Stadium and also the Millennium Bridge in London.
The Gherkin is a celebrated part of design in the UK and especially in London. The other good thing about the building is that it uses a number of different energy efficient methods which means that it actually uses half the amount of power that similar sized buildings use.
“Well, I’m just a big gherkin.” Image Source – flickriver.com
Basque Health Department Headquarters
This is a little known building but it’s pretty astounding too. Situated in Bilbao, Spain it’s in a place which has become quite an architectural hotspot of late and this is no thanks to the Guggenheim Museum.
The Health Department Headquarters were designed and built by Coll-Barreu Arquitectos. They are also responsible for the E8 Building which is a part of the expansion of the Alava Technology Park.
The Basque Health Department is built almost entirely from angular glass and the shape of the building is extremely sporadic and it’s a somewhat organically-inspired shape too.
“I’m an organic shape, yay! Healthy me!” Image Source – skyscrapercity.com
The Great Glasshouse
This is actually situated in wales, however it’s not in the back garden of a pensioner. This is situated in Carmarthenshire and it is home to plants that come from six areas of the world: California, Australia, the Canary Islands, Chile, South Africa and the Mediterranean Basin.
The plants that can be found in this giant greenhouse come from regions that cover only 2% of the world’s surface yet the plants that can be found there amount to 20% of all known flowering plants in the world.
The Great Glasshouse was constructed in the National Botanic Garden of Wales and it was designed by a Gent whom we mentioned earlier in the post. Sir Norman Foster is the man behind The Great Glasshouse and it consists of exactly 785 panes of glass.
“Looks like a modern crop circle…” Image Source – www.flickr.com
National Grand Theatre of China
This is perhaps one of the greatest architectural works in China of the last decade. The National Grand Theatre of China isn’t entirely glass though, it is part titanium and part glass so it kind of shouldn’t be on the list but it’s that stunning that it couldn’t be left off.
For those of you that take a trip to China, the National Grand Theatre isn’t located too far from Tiananmen Square, Beijing and it houses an opera house, a theatre and a music hall which all combine to seat almost 5,500 guests at once.
The clever thing about this dome is that it’s sat in the middle of an artificial lake which provides a reflective view of the dome from the street making it look like a complete oval shape.
“I look like a giant pill…” Image Source – commons.wikimedia.org