Building materials often fall into two main categories: the transparent windows you can see through and the opaque walls you can’t. Translucent materials lie in the no-man’s land somewhere between the two—hard to categorize, often overlooked, but offering benefits from both sides. (Learn more about Middle West Spirits, shown in the cover image above.)
Have you ever really considered what you could do with a translucent facade? If not, now is the time to start rethinking the way you build.
Build Translucent
Unlike transparent glass, the prismatic fibers in Kalwall’s fiberglass-reinforced polymer (FRP) panels refract and scatter visible light waves in perfect Lambertian diffusion, meaning light penetrates much deeper and more evenly into interiors. While you might transmit lower percentages of visible light with a translucent facade, it is ultimately more usable, glare-free light. But quality daylighting is just the beginning of this FRP solution.
Kalwall utilizes FRP as the face-sheet material for structural sandwich panels. The FRP sheets (3, 5) are bonded to a structural grid core (6) composed of interlocking aluminum and thermally broken I-beams. The bond line (2) between the FRP and the grid core utilizes a proprietary adhesive technology. Translucent insulation options (4) within the panel cavity allow custom thermal performance up to a 0.05 U. The Kalwall panel composition also includes a proprietary weatherable coating (1) that provides self-cleaning properties and UV resistance.
Be Creative with Unitization
While translucent facades offer a step up where privacy is preferred, if your building needs a view outside, you’ll need to incorporate some transparent windows.
Luckily, Kalwall’s unitized curtain walls allow you to seamlessly incorporate strategic areas of view without significantly compromising your overall daylighting design or building performance. For example, adding a line of windows at eye level surrounded by translucent panels prevents excessive use of inefficient glass.
Kalwall recently announced a brand-new translucent insulated glazing unit, 175CW, which can fit into almost any curtain wall system for the ultimate in design flexibility, helping bring all these benefits to almost any build you can imagine. Mix and match translucent panels with high-performance vision glazing and other cladding options like metal or spandrel panels in your curtain wall design.
Daylight with Your Entire Facade—Sustainably
So, what if your entire building was a luminaire? What if you could let in the light and maintain a thermally efficient envelope? A translucent facade is a game-changer.
Kalwall’s translucent facades offer the best of both daylighting and thermal performance. Balanced, glare-free light during the day—without the need for automated lighting controls—means reduced electrical costs. Insulation values that are nearly as high as a solid wall (R-20) along with solar heat gain coefficients as low as .04 means reduced HVAC costs.
All of this means you can use large areas of translucent wall panels or even design an entire translucent facade while lowering your building’s carbon footprint.
On top of all that: Kalwall panels are made from recycled materials and are recyclable themselves. That’s a lot of sustainability in one strong, lightweight package.
Bringing All the Benefits Together
One project that skillfully leveraged these strengths is the Crouch End Picturehouse, located in London. Originally a factory and then an office, the building underwent a remarkable transformation into a £6.5 million ($9.75M USD) five-screen cinema complete with café, bar, restaurant and community rooms. The highly insulating qualities of Kalwall coupled with other sustainable measures, including solar panels and a green wall, helped the building achieve a BREEAM rating of Very Good, as well as winning Building Design’s Architect of the Year Award 2016 (Sports and Leisure), Best Green Design at the Haringey Design Awards 2016 and The Architect’s Journal 2016 Retrofit Leisure Award. That’s a lot of accolades, which only sweetens the energy savings and increased comfort.
Building for humans is kind of our thing. At Kalwall, it’s not just about selling a product; it’s about supporting the movement toward daylighting, energy efficiency and thermal performance to benefit the entire architecture, engineering and construction community and the world in which we build. We promote healthy daylighting to support human-centered design solutions that support people living, working, learning and playing in the built environment every day. That’s why we don’t just sell daylighting—we sell daylighting plus all the benefits.