The Vessel: Architectural jungle gym made of glass

04/27/2020 | Print view

Reminiscent of a honey comb and inspired by a step well in India, The Vessel was awarded a major prize at last year's World Architecture Festival in Amsterdam. - © Tyrolit — © Tyrolit

Reminiscent of a honey comb and inspired by a step well in India, The Vessel was awarded a major prize at last year's World Architecture Festival in Amsterdam.

The Vessel is an iconic structure and landmark built as part of the Hudson Yards redevelopment project in Manhattan, New York.

Last December the project won a major prize at the World Architecture Festival in Amsterdam. The jury explained their decision as follows: “People engage with this platform in a new way. It shows clear structural innovation which offers members of all communities in the city the opportunity to devise new creative moments in their lives.” Built to plans by British designer Thomas Heatherwick, the elaborate honeycomb-like structure rises over 16 storeys high and consists of 154 flights of stairs, 2,500 steps and 80 platforms that visitors can climb and explore. The copper-clad stairs, which are arranged like a jungle gym and inspired by Indian step wells, can accommodate up to 1,000 people.

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The Croatian company Formator Safety Glass, based in Rijeka, produced the 4,000 square metres of 1010.4 low-iron tempered laminated glass with an interlayer by SentryGlas. The production of the low-iron glass was very challenging, as the tolerances for the shaped glass was very strict. Tyrolit took up the challenge and delivered its flat peripheral diamond wheels on vertical CNC machines. Formator employed both segmented and trapezoidal peripheral discs with diameters of 200 millimetres in order to achieve the near-zero tolerances.

Clad in copper and not a million miles away from an etching by M. C. Escher, building this edifice did require precision engineering and near-zero tolerance tools.

In working with the laminated glass, Formator staff not only benefited from the perfect edge processing, but also from the high feed speed and the excellent start-up times of the grinding wheels. In addition, the long service life of these peripheral grinding wheels called for fewer interruptions for wheel changes and consequently also brought economic advantages.