The Development of Single Direction Cable Supported Glass Walls

Timothy Macfarlane

The glass walls developed for the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University, and the Marion County Library in Indianapolis have all been engineered using the principle of parallel cables in one plane to support flat glass panels.

The façade geometries vary from semicircular planes with a diameter of 60 metres to a curved wall 90 meters long by 12 metres high.

The glass walls of the Kimmel Center and the Indianapolis Library are both tensioned by weights and the Princeton wall is tensioned against the roof structure and the foundations.

The approach to evaluating the impact of pressure variations on the dynamic behaviour of the wall, as well as the technical and contractural issues encountered in constructing the walls, will be discussed in detail.

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