Rising sea levels, extreme weather, droughts and summer heat - these effects of climate change affect all of Europe’s coastal towns and cities. But while others are adopting a wait-and-see attitude, the climate scenario for Denmark and its capital Copenhagen was cause enough to trigger a rethink a few years ago. Denmark is the first country in the world to set itself the target of completely eliminating the use of fossil fuels. By 2050, they want to completely abolish the use of coal, oil and gas. The country is increasingly becoming a pioneer in the field of sustainable construction projects. Denmark's new architectural flagship projects attract design enthusiasts and urban developers from all round the world. "Scandinavian and especially Danish architecture has been setting standards for years," enthuses Joachim Stoss, Managing Director of the German company Edgetech Europe GmbH. "Sustainability is much more than just energy efficiency and resource conservation, as evidenced by the Maersk Tower in Copenhagen."
Creative use of the design element of copper
Edgetech
The Maersk Tower is already a new landmark of Copenhagen a year after it was opened. As part of the Panum Institute of the University of Copenhagen, that is home to the Department of Health and Medicine, the three-bladed, slightly corrugated tower is Denmark's most energy-efficient laboratory building. Rainwater collected for toilet flushing and garden irrigation, automated LED lighting, a connection with the remote cooling system, many green areas and roofs and in particular the unique solar protection solution all contribute towards this. A design resembling a relief of horizontal fibreglass elements and 3,000 vertical copper-clad fins was installed in front of the transparent aluminium facade with storey-high triple-glazed IG units and panels. These panels act both as solar protection and as a windbreaker. The blinds that have in some cases been designed as movable elements react to the weather. Where there is a large amount of sunlight, copper grids automatically protrude from the slats. They reduce the energy input, but still allow daylight to enter the rooms. Choosing copper as a material was not arbitrary, but was intended to allow the building’s facade to fit in with the surrounding architecture of traditional brick edifices.
The warm edge as an evergreen
It is not even 20 years ago since architect Helmut Jahn and structural engineer Professor Werner Sobek set a milestone on the way to an energy-efficient, transparent glass building shell in the form of the Highlight Towers in Munich. At a time when most insulating glass manufacturers had focused their production on double glazing, they created one of the first transparent high-rise ensembles without a reinforced concrete core, but one that did come with a single facade, triple glazing, natural air conditioning and building-connecting “sky bridges”.
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Today, triple glazing is, in most cases, standard when it comes to creating energy-efficient building envelopes. Warm edge spacers, which significantly reduce thermal bridges at the edge of the glass and thus heat loss, is a comparatively young product. "Now 30 years old, our Super Spacer spacer system was one of the pioneers," explains Joachim Stoss, "and despite the spacer being so small in terms of the overall volume of the construction, it is more important than ever for insulating glazing, if you have ambitious energy efficiency goals to reach."
Edgetech
The Maersk Tower incorporates Edgetech Super Spacer TriSeal Premium Plus in the 1,200 square metres of cylindrically curved glass elements produced by the Glasbiegerei Döring on behalf of Waagner-Biro. For the convex and concave triple glazing units, an SSG Climatop Contour glass structure with highly translucent, neutral diamond white glass was selected to ensure as much daylight as possible enters the room during the long Scandinavian winters.
Industrial quality Super Spacer processing
"For us as a glass bending company, in addition to the excellent heat-insulating properties of the Super Spacer, the industrial quality of processing it was the deciding factor," explains Michael Hering, Technical Director at Döring. "Glass bending often requires real and time-consuming manual work. The millimetre-accurate and rapid application of the spacers from the roll is therefore both an economic and a quality issue." Acrylic adhesive is externally applied to the three-stage edge compound system, permitting the immediate further processing into insulating glass units. Especially in the event of triple-glazing inaccuracies in the spacer application covering a large area it can rapidly take on an unattractive appearance. The Super Spacer warm edde spacer system facilitates precise, absolutely parallel application in addition to corners with exact 90° angles.
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U-values of up to 0.5 W/m2K are achieved with the curved triple insulating glass of the Berlin-based company, but the edge seal has to withstand absolutely any imaginable stresses to ensure decades of use. Döring have the following rule of thumb: The narrower the bending radius and the smaller the format is, the higher the bending stiffness will be. As a result, the edge seal is subjected to higher stresses. Flexible spacers also undergo the weather-related pumping movements of the glazing, however by their nature they flex with the glass and always return to their original position, minimising the stresses in the edge compound, and especially on the seals. A small but important detail in some projects is also the appearance according to Hering. As curved glass panes are usually installed next to flat glass panes, no differences in the processing should be visible. The black Super Spacer chosen for the Maersk Tower has no perforations or light reflecting surfaces. Joachim Stoss concluded by stating, "As it completely disappears from view when installed in the frame profile, the Super Spacer stealthily saves energy.”
