The Stacked Glass Columns - Wilbert de Rooij

THE STACKED GLASS COLUMNS Wilbert de Rooij

w.t.d.rooij@student.tue.nl

Design graduation project

/Bachelor Architecture/2012-2015/

This design was made to show the architectural possibilities of stacked glass columns. A student structural engineering Roy van Heugten was graduating on the subject of constructive glass columns at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

During his research he found out a glass column can withstand greater pressures than concrete columns of the same size. For his final presentation a scale model of a glass column was desired and he was looking for a designer.

Two stacked glass scale models were eventually made. The columns are both 37,5 cm high consisting of 125 glass plates of 3 mm thick. The glass plates are cut by a water jet cutter and eventually polished and glued together with special transparant capilair adhesive. When placed on a mirror the columns are 75 cm high and at there widest 13 cm wide.

The idea was to design two columns with one set of sections, making the columns to be a negative variant of each other. Theoretically the smaller column perfectly fits in the hollow column. The outer surface of the hollow column is polished to show the inner structure of the column.

Amazing is the way the glass plays with the light. Under every light condition the columns reveal more or less of themselves. When put next to a window the columns are very green, showing the natural greenness of glass that we are normally unaware of.

The stacked glass columns were eventually presented at a congress in Lausanne, Switzerland and published in two leading magazines in the Netherlands in building technology and glass innovation. (Bouwwereld number 3 of 2015 & Glas in Beeld number 1 of 2015)

THE STACKED GLASS COLUMNS Wilbert de Rooij

w.t.d.rooij@student.tue.nl