All-glass shell scale models made with an adjustable mould

Ever since Lucio Blandini developed a doubly curved synclastic shell with adhesively bonded glass components, the concept of building a self-supporting glass-only shell has almost become within reach. In the current contribution a small-scaled experimental concept is presented of a self- supporting anticlastic all-glass shell scale model, created by means of an adaptable mould.

First, different manufacturing parameters of relatively small shells are investigated, such as mould type, glass supporting system and dimensions, oven temperature and shell curvature.

Next, an adjustable mould for the bending of glass is developed, built and tested. With this mould it is possible to make glass panels synclastic and anticlastic in a great variety of forms. With this new moulding technique we were able to create different prototypes. They are forming the basis an intended larger shell, composed of smaller segments. The objective is to join the latter by using fusing techniques, which result in completely transparent monolithic all-glass shells. Therefore, additional experiments have been performed to explore different variants of glass fusion techniques to be applied for double curved glass shells.