In 2017, a client approached Old Town Glass, a California glass contractor, with a project: A cliffside home with a curved facade featuring 50 m of cold-bent glass with an inflection pane bridging concave and convex sections. With the foundation already built, they needed a cold-bent laminated, s-curve insulated glass unit (IGU) to minimize anisotropies and optical distortions for their unobstructed view of the Pacific Ocean. Cold-bent laminated glass requires panes of glass to be individually bent and laminated together in the autoclave, allowing them to hold shape without structural silicone, supporting framework, or significant heat required for hot-bending. Unlike typical single-radius cold bending, this project required double curvature, demanding new calculations beyond existing FEMs to predict rebound and final geometry. Tight tolerances were critical as minor deviations could misalign the inflection area, leading to inaccuracies and structural stress. To ensure precision, the team created a full-width mock-up and used 3D point-cloud scanning, 3D-printed templates, and overlays to refine adjustments before fabrication. The rugged coastal job site location added complexity. Custom seismic brackets were needed, truck deliveries navigated narrow highways, and installation required careful planning to account for unpredictable weather, long commutes, and logistical disruptions from COVID-19. Despite these challenges, the s-curve glass was successfully installed in June 2023, following over six years of collaboration among sedak’s R&D team, EOC’s facade engineers, Sky-Frame, Old Town Glass, and others. This project demonstrates the feasibility of cold lamination bent glass with double curvature and expands the understanding of what can be achieved with this fabrication method, informing future research and applications in complex curved glass design.
Knott et al. (Wed,) studied this question.