University of Michigan’s Taubman College Studies New Functions for Glass

Glass shaped by auxetic patterns in “Slumped Glass: Auxetics and Acoustics” by Wes McGee, Catie Newell and Zackery Belanger

Photo © Courtesy of Taubman College

Two new architectural research projects at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning are exploring ways to use glass building materials. And the studies suggest the material may have the untapped ability to enhance occupant wellness and productivity.

In total, two 18-month projects at Taubman will receive funding from manufacturer Guardian Industries. The contest is part of the company’s longer-term collaboration with the university, which experiments with improving everything from the acoustic performance of glass to its thermal resistance when used as a building’s skin.

One project, a collaboration between Taubman and University of Michigan’s School of Information, addresses the topic Biometric, Communicative, and Environmental Interfaces: Expanding the Functional integration of Glass in Promoting Health and Wellness in the Workplace. A second project, titled Design Ecologies of Glass is a collaboration between Taubman and the university’s engineering college. Both will draw on the school’s expertise in design, fabrication, and robotics.

Taubman Study

The kiln Taubman faculty used to create the special, curvy acoustic glass

Photo © Courtesy of Taubman College

Previous partnerships between the company and the college resulted in funding of $30,000 each for three glass studies: these were Activating Curvature: Modulating Transparency and Sound Performance across Curving Glass by Catie Newell, Wes McGee, and Zackery Belanger; STREAMING: New Educational Atmospheres, Primary Investigators by Maigret and Borum; and RGB: Robotic Glass Blowing, by Matias del Campo, Sandra Manninger, and Wes McGee.

One of those installations by associate professor Jen Maigret and professor Craig Borum from the college’s Master of Science program in Design and Health, titled Streaming New Educational Atmospheres, it demonstrates how a “light-well room” made of dichroic glass and inserted between corridors and classrooms can improve learning outcomes as well as energy performance. Another team led by Robert Adams, director of the Master of Science in Design and Health program, focused on workplace applications has proposed that the visual, biometric and environmental properties of glass can “reduce environmental pressure on cognitive labor, encourage cognitive flow, and promote well-being across psychological and physiological factors.”

Taubman Study

Another specimen of the acoustic glass

This story was featured in Material World, Architectural Record’s products-focused newsletter. Subscribe today!

Kelly Beamon was the products editor for Architectural Record and managed the monthly products newsletter Material World. Before joining the staff of RECORD, she worked as a senior editor for This Old House and Interior Design, and as the managing editor of Surface. As the executive editor of HD magazine, she moderated talks on design trends for HDExpo, an annual hospitality design conference held in Las Vegas. She has also been quoted on design by the New York Times, ABC News, and USA Today and has written columns on American house styles and kitchen and bath trends. She has a B.A. in English from Chatham University in Pittsburgh and 18 years of architecture and design writing to her credit. She resides in Brooklyn with two children, two guinea pigs, and threadbare period original furnishings by George Nelson, Kazuhide Takahama, Charles and Ray Eames, and Gustav Stickley.