The heart of downtown Salt Lake City has recently undergone a vibrant urban renaissance. Façade contractor Steel Encounters gave sedak the order to manufacture the glass for the façade of "111 South Main" designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP.
sedak supplied 57 glass units up to 10.9m, and 46 glass fins and beams up to 10.91m for the 10m high 546-squaremeter entrance hall. The glass manufacturer used a great range of its capabilities to produce them, in particular very precise edging, a special lamination know-how, and high-quality printing.
For the first time, wood veneers were laminated into façade units, which, until then, had been known only in interior design. With the narrowest veneer being 60mm, the architects' design demanded the five wood veneers per laminate to be absolutely parallel in the 7m high glass units. To realize that, sedak had to face three challenges:
- Eucalyptus wood veneers are only available in up to 3m. For a length of seven meters, perfect joints had to be achieved.
- Wood as a natural product reacts to external conditions influences. During the autoclaving process, the glass package is exposed to temperatures of 100°C. That causes the wood veneer to bends upwards which could affect the laminated glass.
- The SG film, used as an interlayer between the glass layers, is heated in the autoclave and therefore becomes smooth. Consequently, sedak had to evolve a solution to ensure that the wood veneers are still parallel after the lamination process without losing transparency or clearness of the glass.
The architects' vision was to create the impression that the massive eucalyptus wood installed at the entrance would reach into the glass. To grow with our client's demands is what sedak stands for. During a three-month test phase, the glass manufacturer hence developed a solution that considered all three factors and formed a flawless result.
