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Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (London) gets a new barrel-vaulted roof of laminated glass

From a Laminated Glass News interview with Graham Dodd, Associate, Façade Engineering Group, Ove Arup Partnership (UK)

Graham Dodd

"As part of the renovation and extension of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (London) by architects Dixon Jones, the historic, cast iron structure of the Floral Hall was dismantled, repaired and rebuilt with a new barrel-vaulted roof of laminated glass. It is linked to new buildings by an escalator slot, enclosed in a simple glass envelope, which is the circulation route from the Floral Hall to an amphitheatre on the first floor".

The Floral Hall's new barrel-vaulted roof of laminated glass

"All new work on the Floral Hall's vaulted, barrel roof had to be in keeping with the historic and listed status of the building and its site; this eliminated the use of tinted or visibly reflective glass. However, for the Floral Hall to work well as a modern function room, the large, clear glass, vaulted roof required high solar control performance and thermal insulation. To achieve this while maintaining the appearance of the original roof, we used narrow, curved panes (364mm wide x 1,850 mm long) of clear, laminated insulating glass. With such a large area of overhead glazing above a densely populated area, there was no doubt that it would be laminated for safety".

The escalator slot: laminated glass panels and fins

"The escalator slot, by contrast, is distinctly modern, in a calm and simple architectural language that is free from the visual clutter of bolt or patch fittings. We achieved this by using a system of laminated annealed glass panels and fins for the slot, which is 17.5m high x 27 m deep and x 4 m wide".

"The use of annealed laminated glass has several advantages over the use of toughened glass. Laminated annealed glass is readily available in stock 'jumbo' sheets of 3.21 m x 6 m with a PVB interlayer. In the event of breakage, the glass does not shatter completely and lose all integrity. Lastly, the minor axis stiffness of the 2 x 19 mm laminate gives improved lateral stability compared with a 19 mm monolithic toughened glass fin".

"The escalator slot's façade panels were also designed in annealed laminated glass in order to obtain large sizes, minimal distortion and a failure mode to eliminate the risk of falling glass."