SageGlass is being used by Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar School, Melbourne, Australia to ensure better sustainability and daylighting and simultaneously to conserve the 19th-century appeal of one among its school buildings built based on Edwardian style.
SageGlass is electronically tintable glass that improves the way people experience daylight in buildings.
The recently renovated Sharwood House has seven modern classrooms and outdoor spaces. One major design objective of the project was to enhance the quality of the learning environment, which was achieved by intensifying natural daylight in the school and enhancing its sustainability on the whole. The school had to conform to the zoning rules to shield the building’s frontage and historic features as it abutted a residential street, and merges into the streetscape of the Edwardian row houses.
The atrium, which posed a challenge to the designers functions as both an assembly and an indoor play area. Architect Daryl Jackson wanted to lessen artificial lighting and optimize natural daylight to save on energy costs to create an ambience favorable for learning. However, the roof’s direction brought in extreme sunlight and heat at specific times of the day.
Jackson contemplated using automated shades and other building paraphernalia to manage the sun, but the project’s blueprint and sustainability goals will be compromised. Hence the atrium skylights were glazed with SageGlass that changes shades automatically to manage the glare, heat gain and fading brought about by the sun. SageGlass averts destructive effects to the interior and prevents 98% of the overall solar radiation and allows enough sunlight to come into the building excluding the undesirable heat gain.
Ivanhoe Girls’ school provides an example of how SageGlass fits effortlessly into different projects, spanning newly constructed office buildings with the state-of-the-art building management system technology to modernize a century old heritage building wherein it is essential to merge in artistically with the background.
SageGlass is part of a complete green building design approach that integrates cooling and passive heating and preservation of water. A building management system incorporates skylights, which has light sensors that automatically stimulate the shading and unshading all through the day based on the direction of the sun. SageGlass tint can be controlled manually also by pressing a button.
Source: www.sageglass.com