ADVANCED INTERLAYER SOLUTIONS
Described by Dezer Developments and the Porsche Design Group as ‘engineered luxury’, the $560 million Porsche Design Tower is a 57 storey ultra-luxury structure occupying 2.2 acres (8,900 m2) of beachfront land on Collins Avenue in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida.
The tower – the first of its kind anywhere – comes equipped with a speedy 600 ft (183 m) per minute elevator for the residence owner’s cars – allowing owners to park their vehicles right next to their apartments, no matter what floor, in their own sky garage.
The developers and the architects had to balance luxurious, beachside living and the incredible unobstructed views over the Atlantic Ocean with the functional demands of a building of this type and structure. They also needed to consider stringent building code requirements as well, especially in relation to Florida’s and Dade County’s demanding hurricane mitigation regulations and its local sea turtle lighting ordinances. David Rinehart, the North America Protective Glazing Marketing Manager of Trosifol, notes: “After Hurricane Andrew occurred in 1992, the design requirements of architectural glazing intended for use in South Florida had to change to meet new impact and cycling performance requirements that were intended to ensure better structure survivability due to resistance to wind-borne debris and the potential damage caused by hurricane-force wind and rain. Laminated glass provided the post-glass breakage integrity for fenestration systems such as windows, doors, storefront, curtain wall, and skylight systems installed in residential and commercial buildings.”
For this demanding application, the 25,000 m2 (269,100 ft2) of glazing deployed on the external surfaces of the tower takes advantage of the advanced functional characteristics of SentryGlas® ionoplast interlayers from Trosifol.
According to Tim Kaiser, from Cardinal Glass, the project’s laminator: “Two types of panel formulations were used. The 2,500 m2 (26,909 ft2) of panels used on the first three storeys have to offer protection from large-missile impacts, as per the Miami Dade Hurricane Ordinances. At 13.6 mm (0.54 in) thick, they comprise 6 mm (0.24 in) of our grey low E 366 glass, with a sputtered coating, a 2.28 mm (90 mil) SentryGlas® interlayer and 6 mm (0.24 in) of clear glass. The rest of the building’s 22,500 m2 (242,188 ft2) of glass panels have to address small-missile ordnances and have the same glass formulation, but with a thinner 0.89 mm (35 mil) SentryGlas® interlayer. As well as using it on the external balcony railings – in line with expanding local legislation – we also had to take into account the sea turtle lighting ordinances. For this reason the glazing can only allow 45% or less light transmittance.
Application
Region
Interlayer
Architect
Laminator
Engineer
