Blue sky inspiration for laminated glass façade

The Ulysses Guimaraes Convention Center in Brasilia, Brazil´s capital city, was originally designed in the 1970s by legendary Brazilian architect Sergio Bernardes. When it came time to renovate the building (completion: December 2005), Rio de Janeiro firm Mayerhofer & Toledo APC (M&T APC) took over the job - and chose to install an entirely new, 6,000 m2 blue opaque exterior façade of laminated glass containing DuPont^TMButacite® PVB interlayer as the centerpiece of the renovation.

Architect Luiz Claudio Franco from M&T APC told LGN: "The façade is made up of blue laminated safety glass with alternating clear and translucent white Butacite® interlayers for varying degrees of opacity. We got our inspiration from Brasilia´s beautiful blue sky; the façade mirrors the sky! We also used the opacity provided by the translucent white interlayer to conceal the older parts of the building behind it.

The new laminated glass façade also adds lightness to the original, heavy structure of the building, lets more light into the convention center and is easy to maintain."

Dario Farhat, director of Glassec said: "The laminated glass façade is a combination of blue glass and clear and translucent white Butacite® PVB. This combination offers great design flexibility to the architects, in addition to high energy savings and acoustic performance. Our ´Energy Blue´ laminated glass containing Butacite®, provides great energy savings through its solar heat gain reduction properties."