Glass is the best. Glass is the friend who drives you to the airport without complaining, who helps you move your fourteen-ton couch in exchange for beer, who tells you that you’ll regret the neon green mohawk when you look back at your wedding photos. Glass goes the extra mile. Without glass we’d either live and work in rooms devoid of daylight or we’d punch holes in the walls and our homes and offices would be full of weather, confused seagulls, and the occasional ambitious praying mantis.  It would be chaos.

Now imagine if glass could go one better: if glass could get you tickets to the Superbowl, or if it let you drive its Bugatti. In my humble opinion, that day has dawned.

Image courtesy helixated.com

A group of South Korean scientists have developed new glass that “becomes more or less transparent according to the light outside, darkening to save air conditioning bills on hot days, and letting in warmth on cold days to reduce heating costs. But unlike other designs, it does so automatically, without users having to use a control to dim or brighten the effect” (Schiller).  At this point, if you’re a devoted reader of ARCHITERIALS, you’re probably thinking, “but wait wasn’t there that glass that changes color and then that other really cool irridescent glass film? Hasn’t this been DONE??”

Well …. yes.

BUT there are drawbacks to many of the existing varieties of smart glass (electrochromic glass, for instance, or suspended particle displays): “many are expensive, degrade after relatively short periods, or present environmental problems during manufacturing processes” (Schiller).  So if you’re looking for a way to reduce heating and cooling bills but don’t want to degrade the environment by more than the minimum possible, then theoretically this new smart glass might work for you.

The researchers assert that their layered assembly of polymer, counterions, and methanol creates a low-cost, stable window embettered by an ability to switch automatically from transparent to opaque in a matter of seconds (Schiller).  I assume that this is based on the amount of light that hits the glass. In case you are not familiar (I wasn’t): counterions exhibit a charge opposite to the substance with which they are associated.

Image courtesy Chang Hwan Lee, Ho Sun Lim, Jooyong Kim†, and Jeong Ho Cho

So here’s how I understand this: the researchers created an environment where nanocrystalline surface structures either scattered the incident light (producing an opaque effect) or dissolved away, allowing light to travel through the glass.  The assembly is less toxic to produce than other chemical-intensive composites, and rather than requiring an electric current to achieve a transition from opaque to transparent, the material can make the change on its own. Magnificent.

WU XING:

I have filed smart glass under WATER because it makes sense.

Cited:

Schiller, Ben. “Smart Glass Becomes More Or Less Transparent Depending On The Weather.” Fastcompany.com 10/3/11. Accessed 10/4/11. URL.

“Counterion-Induced Reversibly Switchable Transparency in Smart Windows.”  Chang Hwan Lee, Ho Sun Lim, Jooyong Kim and ,Jeong Ho Cho. ACS Nano 2011 5 (9), 7397-7403. URL.

Say what you will about the 1990’s, the decade produced some severely under-appreciated and entirely too short-lived cultural moments: I mean, Hammer pants? Titanic? Come on – you know you loved it!  Another phenomenon of the 1990’s that in some ways is slightly less exciting than the OJ Simpson trial, but which has stayed with us to this day is: green-tinted glass.

Image courtesy metaefficient.com

No one knows exactly how it started, but I imagine that sometime in the 1990’s, an architect somewhere in the world specified green-tinted glass for the fenestration on a prominent building. This building was probably published in a print magazine that a lot of other architects read, and somehow, without even knowing what was happening, they all suddenly wanted to use green glass on their projects too.  I completely understand: the exact same thing happened to me when I was reading Elle and saw that Heidi Klum decided to cut bangs (and yes, mine are still growing out).

Image courtesy instyle.com

What if there was a way to have your green glass cake when it felt trendy, and then not have the same cake twenty years later when it was moldy and dated, and kind of sad looking?  I think perhaps there is!

I recently learned that a University of Connecticut scientist has developed a method that allows films and displays to change color.  The obvious application for this technology is sunglasses, and everyone from Hollywood stars to the U.S. military are interested in lenses that respond to changes in the environment to make it easier to see (or be seen).

Typical transition lenses use photochromic films, which are sheets of polymers that change color when light hits them. The new color-changing technology uses electrochromic lenses; these are controlled by an electric current passing through them that adjusts when triggered by a stimulus such as light (Physorg.com). The arrangement is similar to a double-pane window with a gel sandwiched between the glass.

Image courtesy physorg.com

That’s what got me thinking that this material, which can change color as quickly as electricity can travel through it (ie instantaneously) could be great for buildings.  The polymer used by the scientists creates less waste and is less expensive to produce than previous mixtures, which is good because for an architectural application, you’d need a lot of it!

WU XING:

I have filed this under fire because electricity creates the color change, and under wood, because it’s a polymer.

Cited:

“A Better Way to Photo Gray: New Technology Allows Lenses to Change Color Rapidly.” Physorg.com 07/12/11. Accessed 07/15/11. URL.