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Close-up of the loadbearing, laminated glass column

Town hall in Saint Germain-en-Laye gets laminated glass roof and load-bearing, laminated glass column

In every French municipality, from the smallest village to the grandest city, the town hall is the nerve center of the community, serving both as official reception hall and the seat of the town council. The town hall at Saint German-en-Laye is no exception to this rule; the council's new Administrative Center needed to be impressive, not showy – so as not to overpower the town hall itself. In addition, it needed to strictly adhere to the traditional architecture of the town.

Laminated glass solved the problem as architects Jerome Brunet and Eric Saunier blended rigor and modernity pertinence and discretion in their design for the project, which was a runner-up in the 1996 DuPont Benedictus Awards.

The Administration Center's offices are glazed with laminated glass to their full height on the building's exterior wall and along the main corridors and thus offer administrative personnel a modern, well-lit and friendly place to work. The glazing products limit solar loads and heat loss while capturing light, creating in effect a 'living wall of light."

The central courtyard, covered with a 700 square meter, laminated glass roof, includes a large glass cone, which creates an inner patio planted with a tree and shrubs.

The central courtyard, covered with a 700 square meter glazed roof, constitutes the public reception area on the ground floor and is the core of the project. A large glass cone passes through the glazed roof in the center of the courtyard, creating an inner patio planted with a single tree.

Another spectacular element is the glazed roof, 'floating' on a loadbearing structure of laminated glass columns, used for the first time in the history of building construction. These four-meter high, cruciform columns are each capable of bearing a weight of 50 tons and are made from a loadbearing sheet of glass 15mm thick by 20 cm wide, held in a sandwich between two protective glass sheets of the same thickness.

The 1996 DuPont Benedictus Awards Jury said: "The technological research – working glass as a structural material – that went into the beams and supports is interesting. The purity of the design of the project and the presence of trees in the heart of the glass is also very impressive."