Nothing less than the perfect symbiosis of glass and wood - that is what the architects of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) wanted for a new 24-level office building in Salt Lake City, USA. The wood installed in the façade of the lobby "grows into" the seven meters high glass elements. sedak, specialized in oversize formats, to let this architectural vision become reality they have developed a lamination technique that allows the German glass manufacturer to laminate real wood veneers in between the glass layers. Hence, the visual appearance is original and the wood permanently protected by the glass.
The architects of the San Francisco office of SOM had a clear vision of the office skyscraper’s lobby in downtown Salt Lake City which would have precious wood components that merge with seven meters high glass elements. However, something like that had never been done before. The first suggestion was to use a photorealistic print. However, that was quickly rejected because the result of a print seemed not real enough to the architects. Therefore, the approach to a solution was to laminate real wood veneers in between the glass units’ layers. Then, integrating a natural, organic material in a glass unit without causing any damages during one of the production steps (e.g. tempering furnace), or losing visual quality almost sounded like a “Herculean task”. Thanks to a lot of experience and know-how in laminating glass, and a close cooperation of everybody involved, sedak found a way to let the vision come true.
Salt Lake City, 111 South Main Street: New landmark by the Great Salt Lake
Salt Lake City, capital of the U.S. state of Utah, is situated at the southern tip of the Great Salt Lake. The 180,000-inhabitant city is the main center of the region with about 1.1 million inhabitants. After a recession, the city has been flourishing during the past years. Now, a new point of attraction should arise at the main arterial road. The renowned architecture firm SOM Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP designed a 24-level high tower accommodating apartments, offices, and a representative lobby. This part of the building has an extensive, generous, and elegant design dominated by glass and eucalyptus wood.
Lamination components for the desired vision
By letting the wood appear as if it was inserted within the glass, the building evolves its own effect. To manufacture such glass units, several challenges had to be met:
- The raw material wood – eucalyptus in this case – is organic. It reacts to climatic changes like humidity and temperature and could shrink, become wavy, or burn. The lamination process (100° Celsius) has to be fine-tuned to be adjusted to the raw material.
- Due to the warming in the autoclave, the SG interlayer gets smooth and the wood veneers on it change their position. But the final result had to show laminates being incorporated absolutely parallel wood veneers.
- Wood veneers are only available in up to 3m. For the 7m high glass units, horizontal joints were therefore necessary.
Glass and wood define the appearance of the entire lobby. “The inspiration for the transparent façade was the “Apple Cube” – a perfect all-glass structure,” says Maic Pannwitz, Executive Vice President from sedak in New Jersey. “Therefore the client demanded a transparent supporting structure also for the project “111 South Main Street”. The required glass fins reach a height of nearly 11m. The project managers found the necessary production competence also at sedak.