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Just as we layer clothes, U.S. architects finally start layering buildings

By Rain Noe - January 28, 2011

in Tech | Sustainable Design

I was in the Arctic Circle last year freezing my butt off, and it never ceases to amaze me that humans have lived up there for eons, well before indoor heat. One "technology" that enabled early cold-climate survival was the simple layering of clothes; Nanook the First was wearing a bearskin and froze to death, but Nanook the Second added another bearskin and was fine.

With the idea of layering clothes to insulate our bodies being such an old principle, it's rather amazing it's taken American architects so long to get around to applying it to buildings. (It's old-hat to Europeans.) According to the Chicago Tribune,

...Federal officials on Thursday unveiled an innovative design that leave the exterior of Cleveland's aging federal building in place and wrap a new metal and glass skin around it. This type of design, known as a "double wall," is expected to cut energy costs and give the stolid steel-and-glass building a fresh skyline identity, making its appearance change constantly in the light.

Renovation work already has begun on the 16-story Peter W. Rodino Federal Building in Newark, N.J. It's laying the groundwork for that building to be "shrink-wrapped," as the plan's chief architect, Richard Dattner, puts it, in a new metal and glass skin. As at the Cleveland building, the two walls in Newark will be separated by a cavity of air, about three feet wide.

Such double walls filter out harsh sunlight and create an insulating layer of air that moderates climatic extremes and lowers energy costs. Office buildings in Europe have used double walls for more than a decade, but the technology remains unusual in the U.S.

Fringe benefits of this type of renovation are that the tenants need not move out during the re-fit, saving some bread there, and the double wall provides more blast protection for would-be terrorist targets (the Cleveland building houses certain Department of Defense offices). Learn more about it here.

A couple of reasons I don't expect to see this taking off in New York: 1) See that crawlspace between the windows? Just a matter of time before it's filled with rats and pigeons, and 2) eventually a teenager with a can of spraypaint will figure out how to get into the crawlspace and just tag the crap out of it.

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amy

13 years ago

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They are doing it in NYC, just south of the Time Warner Center on 8th Avenue at 57th Street, they just wrapped an old brick building in glass. Unfortunately, Google Maps Street View doesn't have the finished product, but they do have a picture just as the scaffolding went up....
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Justin

13 years ago

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In our practice we consider this old technology. There is a simpler and much more cost-effective way to achieve the same thing. That is to have more opaque cladding. However, there are still a lot of 'glass junkies' out there.
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Jan-Jaap

13 years ago

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You would be wrong to assume that here in Europe we don't have pigeons, rats or kids with aerosol paint.
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Sam Armijos

13 years ago

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Another form of Layering buildings for both Energy savings and shading is with a textile facade. The cladding can be branded and adaptable to a variety of environments too.It is more cost effective than the layered glass system. Would love to know how much those glass systems cost!
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