Hello 2008!

If you’re like me, the first week of January is always a tough one. Not only do you still have leftover Halloween candy in the pantry, but plenty of other sweet treats leftover from the past two months worth of holiday celebrations are still calling your name. So we resolve to eat less and exercise more … at least until mid-February when Valentine’s Day and chocolate covered everything comes around. So forget the resolutions of eating less and exercising more (that should be an everyday, all-year, way of life anyway).

The other thing about early January, at least for me, is finding inspiration. It’s cold outside and snow is all over the ground. I’m sitting here wanting to write about something new and exciting and all I see is snow!

But then today my husband sent me this link: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19869/page1/
It’s interesting to me because just a few weeks ago I wrote about how the glass box architecture of years past is becoming rare in terms of what we’re seeing today. I liked reading this article and seeing the images of so many worldwide buildings.

I look at these images and the glass the buildings display and I can’t help but be impressed. Not only was someone creative and genius enough to design such structures, but glass has a part—in many of them a major part—in defining what type of structure each building is.

The nearly all-glass Gherkin (see the image at left, © from www.freefoto.com), for example, has “an aerodynamic profile that reduces wind load and creates a difference in air pressure between the inside and outside that draws cooler outdoor air in through the panels in the façade.” The article explains that this unique feature, along with “abundant” natural light (made possible by glass) means the building consumes as little as half as much energy as other office buildings its size.
Images like these bring a certain level of inspiration to what I do. When I see what’s possible to create with glass it’s exciting to think about what we’ll see in the ten years … perhaps even sooner.