The adhesively-bonded glass brick system of the Qaammat Pavilion in Greenland: From research to realization

Abstract

An adhesively bonded, solid-glass brick pavilion has been designed by Konstantin Arkitekter as a landmark within the Aasivissuit – Nipisat UNESCO heritage in Greenland. The sculptural glass structure, measuring approximately 3.2 m in diameter × 2 m in height, faces a diverse set of engineering challenges compared to existing adhesively bonded glass brick structures. Placed in a remote location in the arctic circle, it has to withstand winter temperatures as low as -35 °C, and be built under a limited budget with the aid of the local population. Hence, key for the successful construction of the pavilion is finding an adhesive that satisfies the structural and aesthetic requirements of the project and simultaneously provides a simple and fast construction that spares the need for specialized building crew and sophisticated equipment, and is able to withstand the polar winter temperatures. Applicability and shear tests in (i) lab temperature conditions and (ii)) -5 °C lead to the final selection of: (a) 3M™ Scotch-Weld™ Polyurethane Adhesive DP610, which has a higher shear strength capacity, 1 mm gap filling capacity and is clear in colour, for bonding the bottom rows of the pavilion where higher strength is required due to the reduced overlapping of the bricks; and of (b) DOWSIL Experimental Fast Curing Adhesive developed by Dow Silicones Belgium particularly for this project, with a satisfactory shear strength, 3 mm gap filling capacity and white colour for the rest of the pavilion; its considerably larger gap filling capacity facilitates the ease of assembly as it can accommodate within the joint thickness the anticipated ± 1.5 mm standard size deviations of the soda-lime cast glass solid bricks and the possible accumulated deviations during construction. The paper further describes the application of the adhesive, first on a small-scale prototype, and then on site, and presents the encountered engineering and logistical challenges during the construction of the pavilion in Greenland.

Adhesive solutions for cast glass assemblies: ground rules emerging from built case studies on adhesive selection and experimental validation

“…Hence, key for the successful construction of the Qaammat Pavilion was finding an adhesive that satisfies the structural and aesthetic requirements of the project, can withstand the extreme winter temperatures of the polar climate and can offer a simple and fast construction that spares the necessity for a specialized building crew and equipment and prevents the postprocessing of the bricks. In specific, the following prerequisites were set for the adhesive (Oikonomopoulou et al 2022a):…”

“…In-situ lamination via a hot-melt foil is as of yet to be available to the knowledge of the authors: this is also exemplified by the bonding solutions adopted for the horizontally stacked glass-sheet sculptures of the Glass Sphinx and the Glass Angel: in both, lamination was discarded as a solution, most probably due to the amount of multiple layers that should be bonded together and the total dimensions of the sculptures. Instead a solution utilizing tape as the bonding media was adopted Bos et al 2012); illustrating as well that structural glass adhesives are yet to be developed for bonding considerably large surfaces of glass in a stacked configuration (Oikonomopoulou et al 2022a).…”

Topologically optimized cast glass: a new design approach for loadbearing monolithic glass components of reduced annealing time

“…Some notable examples include the Atocha Memorial (Paech and Göppert 2008), the Crown Fountain (Hannah 2009), the Optical House (Hiroshi 2013), the Crystal Houses (Oikonomopoulou et al 2015(Oikonomopoulou et al , 2018b (Fig. 1), the Qwalala Sculpture (Paech and Göppert 2018), the LightVault (Parascho et al 2020) and the Qaammat Pavilion (Oikonomopoulou et al 2022). What is common across all aforementioned projects is that the cast glass elements follow the shape of standardized bricks, mimicking the functionality, shape and size of ceramic masonry; a glass volume which can be annealed within a reasonable time length (Fig.…”

IN BETWEEN: An Interlayer Material Study for Interlocking Cast Glass Blocks

“…The ability of the interlayer to accommodate the size deviations of the individual blocks further contributes to decreasing the costs of a cast-glass structure, as it evades the post-processing of the blocks, such as in the Crystal Houses facade (Oikonomopoulou et al, 2017). Previous realized examples suggest anticipated size deviations in height and flatness of ±1 mm for (mould-pressed) borosilicate glass blocks (Paech, Göppert, 2008) and of ± 1.5 mm for (openmould) soda-lime cast glass blocks (Oikonomopoulou et al, 2022) of a size comparable to terracotta bricks. Thus, a thickness between 2-3 mm seems to be an optimum for allowing a consistent contact area while being able to absorb surface irregularities.…”

“…The architectural application of cast glass blocks is slowly gaining popularity, with recent examples including the Qaammat pavilion (Oikonomopoulou et al, 2022), the LightVault (Parascho et al, 2020), the Qwalala Sculpture (Paech, Goppert, 2018), the Crystal Houses (Oikonomopoulou et al, 2018), the Optical house (Oshima, 2012), the Crown Fountain (Hannah,2009), and the Atocha memorial (Paech, Goppert, 2008). All aforementioned projects of self-supporting cast glass block assemblies rely either on a visible, supportive sub-structure (e.g.…”