Double-Skin Cable-Net Facade

Case Study: Loyola Information

Commons
Jason Kirchhoff
Jeff Vaglio
Mic Patterson
Original paper and presentation for BESS2010:
High Performance Building Enclosures - Practical
Sustainability Symposium at Cal-Poly Pomona.

The Richard J. Klarchek Information Commons at Loyola University, designed by

the architecture firm Solomon Cordwell
Buenz, is a 4-story digital library on the
Lake Shore Campus of Loyola University
Chicago. The building is sited along the
Western shore of Lake Michigan, on Chicagos North side. The building is glazed
along its entire east and west facade,
parallel to the long axis of the building.
The 150 structural glass facade made
the building highly transparent, satisfying
the wishes of the owner that the lake be
visible from the courtyard to the west of the
building. These large glazed areas in the
harsh climate of Chicago created a thermal
comfort challenge, solved with an array
of sustainable design strategies that ultimately led to a 47% reduction in expected
building energy use compared to a similar
traditional structure.
The most visually striking facade element
is the west wall, which is a double-skin
glass structure. The outer wall is a cable
net supporting 8 tall by 5 wide monolithic
glass panes. The 3 air space between the
inner and outer skins serves as a thermal
buffer for the building. A stack effect in the
cavity helps to draw in cool air from operable windows on the lakefront east facade.
On the double wall, the blinds are in the
cavity, a superior shading strategy. The
combined effects of the glazing system
and other green features earned the building a LEED Silver rating while offering a
beautiful, iconic structure to the campus.

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Double-Skin Cable-Net Facade

INTRODUCTION

The Loyola Information commons is a

stunning digital library completed on the
campus of Loyola University Chicago in
2007. The building is glazed from top to
bottom on the east and west facades,
creating a four-story transparent box with
two monumental limestone bookends.
Architecture firm Solomon Cordwell Buenz
designed the building as the modern,
transparent eastern boundary of a new
quadrangle formed by the building and its
neighboring historic structures on the campus. The east facade is a custom designed
grid of insulated glass panels. The west
facade features a double-skin. A cable net
supported wall of monolithic glass serves
as the outer skin. The inner skin is the
same system found on the east elevation.
As a completely digital library, the structure
contains no books. Instead, a series of
reading rooms, study rooms, meeting
rooms, and computer labs occupy the
70,500 square feet of space on four floors.
The digital-only content represents a modern addition to a traditional environment,
much like the building itself.

SITE CONTEXT

The building sits mere feet from the water

line of Lake Michigan (Figure 1). This
provided motivation for the transparent
design. Said Loyolas vice president of
capital planning Wayne Magdziarz, We
wanted people to realize that the lake was
on the other side of the building, (Gonchar
2008). The 150-foot long glass facades
on the east and west elevations certainly
accommodated this vision requirement, but
also created a challenge for assuring thermal comfort in Chicagos harsh climate.
The cold winters of Chicago as well as the
direct lake exposure indicate a heating
dominated climate, though there exists a
cooling requirement in the summer and
ample opportunity for natural ventilation in
the summer and shoulder seasons.
The design team ultimately developed
a hybrid mixed-mode system that was
highly responsive to the climate, taking
advantage of natural ventilation strategies when possible and using mechanical
comfort control otherwise (Gonchar 2008).
The highly effective HVAC system, which
is discussed later in the study, contributed
greatly to the buildings overall energy
efficiency.

BUILDING LAYOUT

The building has a ground floor entry into

an open layout computer lab. Seminar
rooms on the ground floor are found in the
building bookends. The second floor offers
a similar layout but integrates a centrally
located reference desk and study rooms
on the periphery of the open space. The
third floor features another large open
layout computer lab in the central area.
Reading and study rooms are located in
the bookends. The top level features a
large meeting room abutting a green roof
and opening to a terrace. On the bottom
three floors, chairs facing the east window
are often filled with students taking advantage of the lake views.

Figure 1: The building sits along the western

BUILDING ENERGY DESIGN

shore of Lake Michigan just north of Chicago,

Illinois.

The building was designed with an array

of sustainable features, ultimately requiring only 53% of the energy of a standard
building. The features are designed to
interact with and complement one another,
while simultaneously defining the building
aesthetically.
The east facing glass has operable shading on the inside. Though less effective
than the cavity-based west facade, the
system is able to reject heat gain and still
allow daylight penetration in the summer
when morning heat gain would be detrimental to the building.
Mechanical cooling is provided through
radiant cooling embedded in the concrete
ceilings. The campus has a centralized
chilled water plant that provides cooling
for most buildings. The unique design of

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the system in the Information Commons

allows for the building to use return water
for its cooling. This raises the campus-wide
efficiency of the centralized cooling system. The HVAC system is controlled by a
Building Automation System that responds
to a preset seasonal operating mode and
a host of internal and external climate
conditions.
The extensive use of glass reduces the
need for electrical lighting during the day.
When high levels of natural light would
create uncomfortable brightness of glare,
the mechanical shades are dropped down.
The lights in the building are continuously
dimmed in response to available daylight,
and vaulted ceilings optimize the dispersion of diffuse light from the T5 fluorescent
lighting system (Fortmeyer 2007).

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Opposite page:
Figure 3 (left): The VS-1 glazing system is used
along the east facade which uses cast stainless
steel fittings to clamp the IGUs.
Figure 4: The interior skin of the west wall
(middle) encloses a cavity interior wide enough
to accommodate window washing units (right).

Figure 5: View of west entry and exterior cable

net (left) and vertex clamp (right).

FACADE

ventilation. Above that is a 5 x 1-4 metal

spandrel panel.

5.1 East Curtain Wall

5.3 West Cable Net
The eastern facade is constructed with
the VS-1 glazing system, a proprietary
product provided by Innovation Glass. The
floor-to-ceiling IGUs are supported only by
a vertical mullion. No horizontal supporting
element is used in the system. The edge of
the glazing panel is not directly attached to
the mullion. Rather, a cast fitting extends
from the mullion and clamps the glass in
place, offsetting the glass plane from the
support system (Figure 3). The clamp
passes through the space between adjacent glazing panels, requiring no drilling or
perforation of the glass. After installation,
the joint between panels is weather sealed
with field-applied silicone.
5.2 West Curtain Wall
The VS-1 system is also used as the inner
skin on the west facade. Both walls are
glazed with glass provided by Viracon.
The vertical mullion system consists of an
aluminum extrusion. A glass fixing component sits in a channel in the front face of
the mullion and extends outward, passing
through the space between adjacent
panels and clamping the glass in place.
This creates a flush glass facade with a
butt-glazed joint using Dow Corning 756
silicon sealant. The VS-1 system relies on
a stick assembly facade with three parts
and an overall measurement of 5 wide by
16 tall. The vision glass portion is a 5x12
IGU with fully tempered inner and outer
lites and airspace. Above that sits a
5 x 2-6 IGU that is operable for natural
40

The outer skin is supported by a grid of

pre-tensioned cables, known as a cable
net. The cable net consists of 6 horizontal
cables and 29 vertical cables, arranged in
an 8 high by 5 wide grid. At the vertex of
each vertical and horizontal cable is a special node assembly that clamps the cables
together and fixes the corners of all four
pieces of monolithic glass (Figure 5). The
space between the outer and inner skin
is roughly 3 feet (Figure 4), except for the
entry space where the inner skin curves
inward to form a vestibule that is part of the
cavity buffer between inside and out.
The horizontal cables are secured to the
limestone bookends via a sharkfin connection (Figure 6). To do this, a sharkfin
shaped 1 thick horizontal metal plate
was prefabricated, complete with a round
channel for the cable. This plate was field
welded to a second 1 steel plate embedded in the building bookends. Workers
ran a cable from one sharkfin anchor to
its match on the opposite bookend, then
pre-tensioned the cable to 44 kips with a
hydraulic tensioning jack.
The vertical cables experience two different terminating conditions. At the top, the
cables are connected to an HSS hangman, an angled piece of steel projecting
up from the roof plate and out 4 from the
inner skin. The vertical cables attach to the
end of this cantilever. The 7 kips pre-stress
force in the cables induces a large reaction

load in the hangman. Pulling down on

the cantilevered extension introduces an
overturning moment that must be accommodated. To do this the horizontal arm is
joined to the vertical arm with a moment
connection and the hangman is braced
back to the building at the roof with a
cable tensioned to 8.5 kips to stabilize the
system (Figure 7).
At their bases, the vertical cables tie to a
concealed spring assembly (Figure 8). The
spring is slightly compressed and installed
at the bottom terminus of the cable. The
assembly is designed to provide for the
predicted deflection of the vertical cables.
A deflection of the glass facade will further
compress the spring, accommodating
deflection without overstressing the cable
while also mitigating the shock effect from
rapid load changes. In returning to its
pre-deflection shape, the spring brings the
cable to its original tension and stabilizes
the system.
Vertical columns spaced every 30 support
the building gravity loads. However, these
columns are also used to stabilize the
cable net. Considering the 5 spacing of
the vertical cables, every 6th cable runs
directly in front a structural column. The
horizontal cables create 6 cable intersection points, or nodes, that are directly in
front of a column. At these points, a steel
strut is connected between the column
and the grid node. The bracing component
transfers some of the lateral loads incident
on the facade to the building structure.

Figure 6: Sharkfin plate anchor

detail (left) and photo (right).

Figure 7: Hangman steel at cavity return (right)

and motorized vent (left).

Figure 8: Detail of the vertical cable base spring

connection. This keeps the system in tension
while allowing for cable deflections under load.
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Double-Skin Cable-Net Facade

Figure 9: SpaceGASS structural analysis model

with superimposed deflection profiles (magnified
for clarity).
Figure 10: Horizontal cable penetration through

Glazing on the west exterior wall is a fully

tempered, 1/2 thick monolithic glass
supplied by Viracon. The panel is 5 wide
by 8 tall, to match the grid spacing of the
cable net. Each piece is point-fixed at each
corner by a custom 4-part stainless steel
casting that clamps to the horizontal and
vertical cables at their intersection. The
casting picks up the corner of all four pieces of glass meeting at the node. Weather
sealing is provided by a 5/8 butt-glazed
silicone joint. The sealant is Dow Corning
756 and is field applied.
A third type of glass is located at the top
of the double wall cavity. This glass, which
caps the cavity space, is 5/16 laminated
glass with a clear PVB. It slopes slightly in
towards the building for drainage.
The corner condition of the cable net
structure presented a challenging design
condition for Advanced Structures Inc.,
the system designer. The outer skin does
not terminate at the bookend, instead
stopping a few feet short and returning
back to meet the inner wall. This creates
both a 90 degree all-glass corner and a
condition where the horizontal cable has
to pass through the glass to continue to
the sharkfin connection. The designers
created a special strut that extends from
the last exposed structural column and
incorporates glass clamps to fix the return
glass along its length (Figure 10). To allow
for passage of the cable through the space
between panes, a semicircular cutout was
made in the top and bottom of adjacent
panes, providing a perforation in the glass
membrane. The gap between cable and
glass was sealed in a manner consistent
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with the rest of the installation.

The design of the curtain walls involved
advanced modeling and calculation by
specialty facade engineers. The cable net
was subject to complex deflection from
lateral loads, primarily wind loads of 30
psf. The horizontal cables were anchored
at each end and to a strut at each column
crossing. Each anchoring point represented a spot of zero deflection. The maximum
deflection in each of these cables would
occur in the center of the mid-column
span, in this case 15 from a column.
However, the horizontal cables were tied
to the vertical cables at their intersections,
resulting in a double curvature that was
the product of the horizontal and vertical
cable contributions. Unlike the horizontal
cables, which were anchored at multiple
points along their length, all vertical cables
between columns were anchored only at
the top and bottom. As such, the deflection
of the vertical cables was maximal at the
mid-point of the vertical span. The resulting
point of maximum deflection for the doubly
curved surface was then at the mid-point of
the vertical span and the midpoint between
columns, occurring at four locations due to
the column layout (Figure 9).
Because the vertical cables could be
expected to deflect more, design measures were taken to allow them to do so.
The spring loaded base terminus of the
cables allows for deflection under loading
and returns the net to its proper pre-stress
after a load event. Additionally the vertical
cables are pre-tensioned to only one-sixth
the force of the horizontal cables and, at
16mm outer diameter, are noticeably thin-

ner. The horizontal cables are fixed at multiple points by column struts and suffer less
overall deflection when subject to lateral
loads. Additionally, the sharkfin connections allowed for only a very small amount
of cable movement. To meet this condition, a larger cable, 28mm in diameter,
was used in the horizontal direction. The
four-part cast steel node clamps contained
channels sized appropriately for the two
different cable diameters. The maximum
allowable deflection for the cable wall was
L/50 = 7.2. SpaceGASS structural analysis software verified the system was within
the allowable range, ultimately showing a
maximum deflection of L/58 = 6.2.

the glass. The vertical rail below is part of the

CONCLUSION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

motorized blind system.

Upon completion, the Richard J. Klarchek

Information Commons sported one of the
largest structural glass facades in the
United States. The cable net outer skin on
the double-skin west facade was well designed, relying on a set of unique terminating mechanisms for the cables to properly
respond to loads. It was fitted with expressive and elegantly crafted cast steel fittings
and struts appropriate to an exposed
structural system. The double-skin facade
allowed for a highly advanced thermal
control system that took advantage of the
stack effect and created a thermal buffer
on the vulnerable west side of the building.
The VS-1 glass system, which serves as
both the exterior east wall and the interior
west wall, facilitated natural ventilation
in accordance with the Chicago Building
Code, thereby furthering the energy efficiency of the building. The efforts of the architect, supported by various consultants,
produced a building that uses nearly half
the energy of a similar traditional building.
The structure was ultimately rewarded with
a Silver Certification from the United States
Green Building Council. It stands as both
an expression of the Universitys commitment to green architecture and a powerful
example of the opportunities presented by
structural glass facades.

The project was completed with collaboration between many firms, individuals,
consultants and contractors. Key project
team members include; Loyola University Chicago (owner), Solomon Cordwell
Buenz (architect), Halvorson & Partners
(structural engineer), Elara Engineering
(mechanical engineer), CDC (glazing
consultant), Charter Sills & Associates
(lighting consultant), Shiner + Associates,
Inc. (acoustical consultant), Transsolar
(climate consultant), Pepper Construction
(general contractor), Enclos Corp & Advanced Structures Inc. (facade contractor/
engineer), Viracon (glass manufacturer),
Innovation Glass (glazing system), Sieban
Energy Associates (LEED consultant).
REFERENCES
Gonchar, J. (2008). Loyola University Information
Commons: The Total Package. In Green Source,
November, 128-135. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Fortmeyer, R. (2007). Getting Aggressive About
Passive. In Architectural Record, May, 241-248.
New York: McGraw-Hill.

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