Going green with glass
New techniques are helping architects bring more natural daylight into buildings Besides saving energy, ‘transparent insulation’ may offer better light for work, play
Ever seen a hockey arena with windows? Chances are you haven’t. Windows let the sun get through, and slivers of sunlight can play havoc with the ice, causing soft patches and glare that don’t make for a good hockey game. That’s why arenas, in addition to having bad coffee and scary hockey moms, tend to be closedin, dingy and uninviting. When the Cape Breton, N. S., town of Port Hawkesbury decided three years ago to replace its old condemned hockey rink with a combined arena and civic centre, it wanted the new complex to be a sustainable “ green” building – energy efficient, welcoming, airy and bright. But not so bright that hockey players had to skate with shades on.
This posed a challenge for Bob Ojolick, the lead architect on the project. Brightening up the civic centre would be relatively easy, but bringing that same appeal to a 1,000- seat arena would prove tricky without compromising ice quality and energy efficiency. “The community itself, the mayor and board of directors of the complex were willing to be innovative in thinking,” says Ojolick. “ They said, if you can do what you need to do for reasonable dollars, let’s do it.”
Ojolick consulted with Douglas Milburn, founder and president of Advanced Glazings Ltd. in Sydney, N. S. Milburn is an expert in transparent insulation, having spent the early 1990s doing his Ph. D. on the topic at the University of Waterloo.
During that time Milburn engineered a transparent honeycombstructured glaze for glass that acts as an insulator for windows and has the ability to diffuse direct sunlight. After graduation he founded Advanced Glazings, and since then his insulating glaze product, called Solera, has become an architect’s dream. The material has been used at the Cirque du Soleil campus in Montreal, where students at the National Circus School can enjoy glare- free natural daylight while training indoors. It has also been used in a number of educational and retail environ-
ments, including several Target Stores in the United States.
“ It opens up the imagination of architecture,” says Ojolick, explaining that windows can be used in places that in the past were unthinkable. “ The product is so sophisticated that you can actually create a ( glass) wall element and standing in front of it you can feel very little heat. It’s substituting a metal insulated skin for a glass insulated skin.” But reducing glare was just as important with the Port Hawkesbury arena. So Milburn whipped up some computergenerated images to give Ojolick a sense of how the sunlight would enter an arena that had been built with sloped wraparound windows just below the ceiling. The Solera product had a dramatic impact, providing equal distribution of light any time during the day and at whatever angle the sun was shining, with no glare or shadows. When the arena was finished, the high- tech glaze far exceeded Ojolick’s expectations. He says the artificial lighting in the complex rarely needs to be turned on between 9 a. m. and 4 p. m. — even in winter — because the natural sunlight meets the rink’s requirements.
“ It’s like skating on an outdoor rink,” he says, adding that on sunny days “ it reduced energy costs to zero in terms of daytime lighting use.” This is translating into electricity savings of 40 per cent to 50 per cent a year, leading to a payback within eight to 10 years on the upfront cost of the Solera installation, says Ojolick. The desire for greater energy efficiency and more enjoyment out of work and recreational spaces is generating high interest in green buildings, particularly among architects who have the luxury of designing structures from scratch. The entire arena- civic centre complex is also heated and cooled using a ground source heat pump or “ geothermal” system. A unique part of the system is the use of waste heat that results from ice making, which can usually be seen as steam coming out the back of arenas. The waste heat is captured and used to provide radiant heating in the arena through ethanolfilled loops that line the floors and bleachers in the building, even extending to the sidewalks outside to prevent ice build- up during colder months. Some studies suggest that children learn better, workers are more productive, consumers buy more and people are generally healthier when they spend time in buildings with improved air quality and well-managed lighting, including high exposure to natural daylight. One might assume they would also play a better game of hockey.
“ One of the basics of sustainable buildings is the use of natural daylight,” says Milburn. “ You can keep the lights off and save energy with it, but most importantly it’s about human performance, and making buildings better places to be in.”
Wal-Mart, for example, has found that stores that let in natural daylight experience higher sales. A 1999 study by San Franciscobased Pacific Gas & Electric found that one major retailer who used skylights to let in natural daylight experienced, on average, 40 per cent higher sales compared to stores that didn’t have skylights. Customers simply lingered longer. There are also benefits for schools, where ceilings tend to be low and fluorescent lighting has been a poor replacement for windows and natural daylight. It’s now well recognized after years of research that students
who are regularly exposed to natural daylight in schools have
test scores that are 10
per cent to 20 per cent
higher than their windowless peers.
But even with natural
daylight, the problem
of glare and uneven
heat distribution remain. Anyone who has written an exam in school knows this very well. Having a hot sliver of afternoon sunlight beating down on your body isn’t fun when you’re tackling calculus.
“ Direct sunlight is evil,” says Milburn, who by figuring out a way to diffuse direct sunlight believes he has an edge over skylights and other natural daylighting products.
“ The Holy Grail in school design now is to pump good quality natural daylight onto the desks of students without all the glare problems. Solera provides apretty good and affordable way to achieve that.”
Solera has even sparked the interest of Peter Love, chief energy conservation officer of Ontario. Part of Love’s mandate is to look at technologies that can improve building efficiency and take pressure off the provincial power grid.
“ I’m looking for innovation in lighting, and this is an example of an innovative product that I’d encourage testing of,” says Love. “ It’s a great idea.” Advanced Glazings began selling Solera in 2001, working mostly with architects who are designing new buildings. It fabricates its own windows, based on the custom specifications supplied by the architect. About 85 per cent of sales come from the United States, and revenues have grown 100 per cent to 150 per cent a year since the product was launched. Milburn estimates the market for his product could be worth from $1 billion to $2 billion. While headquartered in Sydney, the company’s marketing office is based out of Brampton. These days Milburn’s big focus is on schools, office buildings and sports complexes such as hockey arenas and gymnasiums. But his eyes are also on a market that served as his initial inspiration: greenhouses.
Trials he conducted in the late 1990s found that his insulating glaze could help greenhouses save 65 per cent to 75 per cent on their energy bills, which back then accounted for about 20 per cent of their gross sales. Milburn figures with natural gas, oil and electricity prices as high as they are greenhouse operators are desperate for a way to reduce costs without comprising light quality.
“ You can imagine what greenhouses are feeling these days,” he says, adding that getting into that market hinges on his ability to raise a round of venture capital.
“ It’s a burning opportunity.” Clean Break reports on emerging energy technologies. Tyler Hamilton can be contacted via e-mail at thamilt@