They say the only consistent in life is "CHANGE". And our professor asked us to write an essay about the innovation and changes that occurs on a place or country that we think is good as a topic. I found this Article about "How to Drive Innovation in Europe": In today's crisis there is an opportunity for change. It would be a crime to waste that chance. With the global economy in turmoil, a new administration in Washington and new leadership coming to Brussels this year, the rules for economic policy are being rewritten. Much of the thinking so far has been short-term, reacting to the immediate financial crisis or industrial dislocation. Read more...

from futurefeeder.com



A prototype of a frameless structural glass shell has been designed and built in order to demonstrate the structural efficiency as well as the aesthetical quality to be achieved by combining glass as structural material with adhesives as joining system.



All the materials are reduced to a minimum. The shell spans 8.5 m and is assembled by gluing only 10 mm thick spherical glass panes at the edges: yet, the lamination of 8 mm float with only 2 mm thick chemically-strengthened glass panes allows a considerable reduction of the dead loads. Moreover, the tensile ring supporting the shell has been designed in titanium to avoid restraint stresses as a result of temperature variations, thus allowing for a slender stainless steel supporting system.





The adhesive technology, developed by the authors, allows for the up-to-10 mm gaps between the panes to be filled, thus allowing the forces to be transmitted and the tolerances to be adjusted. In order to demonstrate the validity of such a joining system, tensile, shear and bending tests have been carried out under different temperatures and loading times.



Several glazed shells have been built in the last two decades, with the goal of minimizing the use and the size of metallic elements. The introduction of glass as a structural material as well as the use of adhesives allows, for the first time, a fully transparent double-curved skin, thereby opening new dimensions to shell design.

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Lucio Blandini

Lucio Blandini is working toward completing a PhD degree at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. The research is supervised by Prof. Werner Sobek and focuses on "Structural Use of Adhesives in Glass Shells."

The prototypes built during the research have been presented at Glasstec 2002 and 2004. Many national and international reviews have commented on the uniqueness of the achievements, such as Detail, RIBA journal, L'Arca and Deutsche Bauzeitschrift.

Presentations of the different phases of this research, financed by DAAD and Daimler Benz Foundation, have been done at GPD 2003 as well as at the International Symposium on Shell and spatial Structures (IASS 2004) in France and at the Glass Days in Venice.

After studying structural and architectural engineering in Catania and Bologna (Italy), Lucio Blandini joined the University of Stuttgart and since September 2004 has been pursuing a Master in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania to further his interdisciplinary approach to architecture.

Originally presented at Glass Processing Days 2005 conference
© glassfiles.com by GPD


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These Glass Dome images were taken during a trip to Europe (northern Italy, Switzerland and southern Germany by a group of 9 architecture students and faculty from the University of Kansas School of Architecture & Urban Design, in the summer of 2004. Nils Gore and Shannon Criss, Professors.

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» Click here to see the entire student photo Gallery of Emerging Technologies & Design in Europe (Summer 2004)