Ethereal Pleats: Glass in the Age of Façadism

Abstract

This research aims to explore the challenges and opportunities in the fabrication of free-form glass assemblies. By capitalising on the material’s viscous behaviour at elevated temperatures and utilising gravity as a forming agent, a new architectural approach to transparency and flow within glass bod-ies is investigated. The material fundamentally drives the design of the tooling system in the form of boundary profiles for a heated sheet of glass to drape onto, and in return, the tool can change how the glass is formed. The culminating final design proposal is generated through logical analysis of self-sup-porting skins that interpret glass as a tangible, optically ephemeral boundary.