Glass facades in the Middle East

In recent decades, the architectural language has given more importance to the ‘transparency' and ‘lightness' of building spaces, thus driving the world towards a flattering, glazed built environment. The question I then pose is, "To what extent fully glazed buildings, in particular the ones that claim to be green and sustainable are actually concerned about the environment?"

Glazed facades were initially possible only due to the development of powerful cooling systems, otherwise these buildings would have been inhabitable, especially in regions such as the Middle East. Forgive me for not elaborating on the enormous amount of energy required to run the air-conditioning to compensate for the added heat loads through glass.

A building enveloped with glass acts like a solar cooker. Remember, that the property of glass is to allow in heat (short waves) and not reflected heat (long waves) back out. For this very feature, glass has been used in the West with its cold climes to allow passive solar heating.

In this part of the world, where methods of keeping the heat out and preventing its transfer are required, architects instead celebrate with glass. Some glass facades are outstanding in terms of beauty and innovation, but we need to think twice before calling them environmentally-friendly.

I wonder why glass is considered to be a material that symbolises ‘progress' in the Middle East, whereas traditional and practical materials such as mud, clay, limestone are often related to concepts of backwardness and poverty. This impractical dissociation between materials and the environmental context of a region causes a slow degradation of the architectural expression prevalent in the Islamic world.

Even local builders often ignore simple concepts of how they can make their lives more comfortable within a living space. Consider the circumstances of walking out at midday.

The first move of ours is to place our hands in a natural — but strategic — way above our eyes to cut off the direct sunlight and reflected heat from the hard landscape we walk on. Our eye is the only transparent part of our body and the most fragile.

We take measures to protect it. Glass in a similar manner is the most transparent and fragile part of any building. Why don't we protect it and shade it from the sun in a similar manner?

One can also imagine the amount of water, equipment and manpower required to just clean off all the settled dust on the thousands of square metres of glass and solar panels on all buildings in the Middle East. Now-adays, tenants spend a lot of money on interior layouts to cut down the harsh light and heat coming in through the huge pans of unshaded exterior glass.

Ventilation

Some architects justify the use of glazing facades for ventilation purposes in the Middle East by their use of colourful sketches showing red and blue arrowed air movements. Unless properly analysed and calculated, these sketched arrows of air movements make no sense at all.

There have been reports of sick-building syndrome, where occurrences of unexpected buoyancy and reverse air movements have taken place.

I agree that the invention of glass, after that of fire, has been an important technological innovation in history. Glass is indeed important — but we need to interpret its usage logically and with an understanding of ecological imperatives, especially in the building industry. The requirement for architecture to contribute to the social and environmental sustainability now charges architects with a responsibility that goes beyond a simple design brief.

I call upon architects to avoid creating these unwanted glass monsters, in terms of comfort and energy usage. But architects speak with their buildings, not with their words.

- The writer is an architect and environmental designer based in Doha.