Not sure if I get the whole picture but one thing comes to mind when talking about gaps that you mentioned - structural silicone.

It's hard to figure out what you described.
Is what you are asking the issues about thermal insulation and water proofing? or structural integration of the window system?

I am not an engineer but here's my thought.
If you treat the window system as a unitized module, each module needs to have it's own strcutural framing which needs to be attached onto building's structure.
Or if you treat that window as assembly of each structural window piece, you would need a free standing structure behind that assembly of window piece or structural joints holding each of glasses.

Welding each unit like you said seems not a good way because it doesn't allow each window unit to move adapting to thermal expansion, differential moving, etc..

i get you up until "structural legos." glazing cannot be used as structure under any circumstances and if you try bearing any weight on glass you are a fool. but it doesn't sound like you really mean that anyway. damirarch is right. if it is simply filling a gap between panes of glass you would use a structural sealant. in this case, "structural" does not mean it allows you bear weight on glass and if you try this, you are again a fool. instead it simply means that the seal is laterally structurally sound, i.e. the seal takes the place of where you would traditionally find a mullion.

as an aside, if you are interested in different approaches to separating or integrating structure and glazing, mies and saarinen are a good place to start. saarinen would integrate the structure and the glazing into the same plane usually with just a glazing stop. mies always separated the glazing from the structure, placing the line of glazing either in front of or behind the line of structure. ed ford's details of modern architecture vol.2 does a nice job of explaining the differences in drawings and images.

Structural window *systems* -- not structural glass . . .

sdr, there is no such thing as a structural window system. you are confusing two basic tenants of architecture. the renderings you show above depict a structural system with glazing between the members. it is not a structural window system. it's more than just semantics; it is a fundamental concept of architecture.

i'll put it another way. if you ask your glazing sub to hold up the roof he's going to shoot you a pissed off look.

@won and done williams: "glazing cannot be used as structure under any circumstances and if you try bearing any weight on glass you are a fool."

well, not quite, to be honest. staircases like the image below are a basic (and rather common, I'd say) thing:

but you can take it a step further, like in this pavillion:



And I know there's even a bridge, assembled out of glass in the making.

That being said: I guess the original poster was asking about structural glazing solutions, for which sillicone would be the most logical solution to fill the gaps between the complex geometry. Look for example at the BMW welt project by Coop Himmelb(l)au, I'm pretty sure that answers your question...

WOW!
Does the glass window support the roof? If so, it is completely ridiculous. Even if glass can sometimes be a structure like the apple store near the central park, such glass structure is super expensive.

And like "won and done williams" said, structural silant isn't a structure by itself, but it still needs a mullion behind even if that mullion could be a glass.
All glass mullions that I've seen are used for supporting the window system itself but not building structure like the example above shows. In case of fire, that house would be a total disaster.
To me, that house seems a show case but not a house.

usernametaken, that pavillion is nuts. i followed your image link to their website - some crazy dutch dudes working on actual structural glass. should have known. ;)

kids, don't try that at home.

glass is a material with physical properties, so there's no reason it can't be quantified and utilized.

the issue is whether any PE (and their insurance carrier) will actually take the liability for a structural use, and whether the AHJ will accept the rational analysis for it's use, particularly for anything beyond a residential folly.

el jeffe, you are right.
Theoretically, any material could be anything.
But, practically some way of using materials could be good and smart, or some be really terrible.

As an example of glass walls, Rem Koolhaas's undulating glass wall is a smart example.
The example above belongs to the terrible.

[rant]this is the shit that drives me nuts. just because something can hypothetically be done, doesn't mean it should be done. "structural glass" or "translucent concrete" - why waste your fucking time trying to prove a point that only other nerdy ass architects give two shits about? this is the reason why the general public thinks architects are full of shit and a waste of their money. who can blame them when instead of trying to figure out what really matters to our clients and the built environment as a whole we waste our time with this bullshit? after being around architects for the last ten years, i sometimes question if i would bother hiring an architect, and i fucking am one.[/rant]

syp's response was much more elegant and concise. my apologizes for the rant.

are you really an architect won and done?

i understand some things that architecture ventures to can be not very architectural or significant to the profession, but explorations in material i dont think are wastes of time. and anyways, the dutch guys are engineers.

translucent concrete? have you seen it? i think clients would be pretty amazed.

its like you are arguing corb drawing the domino house was absurd.. structure must always be on the exterior!!

without people challenging what architecture is / could be, we would still be living in caves. while you might be happy doing stucco houses in subdivisions in florida, some of us like this stuff.

there is a huge difference between maison domino and structural glass. a good architect can recognize the difference. you are awfully naive if you think the ones who can recognize the difference are simply designing "stucco houses in a subdivision in florida." i'll leave it at that.

assigning a morality to tectonics is absurd.

I didn't mean "good" in a moral sense.
Assigning an aesthetic or "artistic" egoism to tectonics is absurd and obsolete.

Maybe i was a bit harsh won, but my comparison to maison domino was that without material innovation (by a gardener, Monier) the Maison domino would not have been possible.

While you might see the two examples you gave (translucent conc. & structural glass) as frivolous, I see possibility.

In your rant you argue that just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done... and that is narrow minded, especially in our field where the best architects have always explored unknown possibilities.

To blame those of us that are interested in these things as being full of shit and causing clients to not respect us (that is what led to my stucco homes comment) is a load of shit.

I'll leave it at this.. you are awfully naive if you think material explorations are useless to architecture.

it's not morality. it's simply logic.

i don't think material explorations are useless; i just think some are more useful than others. sometimes it is good for us to step away from our drafting tables and evaluate what is worthwhile and what is not. nanotech (among others) - good and interesting; structural glass/translucent concrete - not so much. that's all.

anyway, i feel like i'm beating a dead horse a bit, but it's not to have some lively debate on archinect every once in a while. :)

it's nice to have some lively debate....

beefeaters, I fully agree that an architect should explore material possibilities.

By the way, what material possibility do you think that glass wall in the illustrated house is exploring?
I don't see any of new material experiment whatsoever in that house.

There isn't any syp, I agree. That example is quite banal, but (correct me if im wrong) those guys are engineers.

Even if the pavilion or whatever that is was designed by an architect, when reinforced concrete first started to be used, most architects mimicked conventional forms of building. It wasn't until Corbu that the properties of it were fully utilized to create something new.

While I keep referring back to reinforced concrete, I know it is a difficult comparison to make, as structural glass would most likely be more about effect than anything else. But who knows?

Note that this thread says both systems and units. I'm looking at playing with essentially "pre-hung" glazing systems. Outside of using them in a linear-slash-orthogonal manner, one ends up with gaps.

For the most part, I'm worried about water leakage issues than I am structural integrity. At best, these windows would not be holding any real weight other than perhaps fighting deflection rather than handling a full load.

If this hypothetical, I'm curious how one would solve the gaps. Picture above just uses a strip inlay of sorts with silicone filler. However, this would only work if all the fenestration was parallel.

Pre-hung in wood or metal frames ? Which ?

"Assigning an aesthetic or "artistic" egoism to tectonics is absurd and obsolete."

Well, that's a shame. I see two quite different definitions of "architecture" as the subtext of this discussion, so far. And that shouldn't be a surprise -- architecture will have more than one definition to a varied group of individuals -- but this unspoken disagreement could be the cause of unnecessary strife.

There are two kinds of images.
Of them, the worse is the images that result from prematured ego's regression.

There are, in architecture, too many such prematured egos who pretend "artistic".
That is a true shame.

Metal frames.

The whole idea here is to "commoditize" modern framing aka commercial glazing and to also move fabrication of window systems off-site.

May mean more welders and painters but those people are more flexible than window glaziers.

@won and done williams - after being around architects for the last ten years, i sometimes question if i would bother hiring an architect, and i fucking am one.

LOL! Great comment.