Grove City College uses SageGlass to enhance new facility on campus

Date: 12 July 2013

Pennsylvania’s Grove City College is using dynamic glass from SAGE as its showpiece feature in a new sustainably-designed building for science, engineering and mathematics education, known as STEM Hall.

Electronically tintable SageGlass® is installed in an east-facing two-story atrium to minimize the effects of the bright morning sun while enabling students and faculty to gain the benefits of natural daylight and an outdoor view.Preserving the outdoor view was a significant design objective for the college.SageGlass enables students and faculty to maintain a connection to the beautiful campus grounds designed by the “Father of American landscape architecture,” Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed New York’s Central Park.

According to Thomas Gregg, vice president of operations at the college, SageGlass was specifically requested by the facilities manager for STEM Hall. “The atrium is the premier space and focal point of the new building. We needed to make it both a comfortable and aesthetically pleasing environment for the people inside. We looked at motorized blinds to control the morning sun, but they would not only have been mechanically problematic; they would have blocked the view to the outdoors. SageGlass saves energy without blocking the view and natural daylight,” he said.

SageGlass is electronically tintable dynamic glass that maximizes daylight and outdoor views in buildings while controlling glare and heat gain. The glass can darken or clear manually or automatically to save energy and help keep building occupants continuously comfortable throughout the day.

The 60,000-square-foot building was designed by Philadelphia-based architecture firm Ballinger to achieve the energy-efficiency of a LEED® Silver certified building. In addition to SageGlass, the building incorporates green building features such as a chilled beam HVAC system and low-flow fume hoods for the laboratories.

Specified Systems (Canonsburg, Penn.) was the glazing contractor on the project. Regional Manager, Mark Jewell, said SageGlass was surprisingly easy to work with. “We were able to do 95 percent of the window fabrication in our warehouse, saving us an enormous amount of time and effort. SAGE carefully walked us through the entire process to ensure that everything went smoothly. It was nothing but a good experience working with them,” he added.

STEM Hall is expected to be completed in August 2013.

About SAGE Electrochromics, Inc.

SAGE Electrochromics is the world’s leading manufacturer of advanced dynamic glass that can be tinted or cleared to optimize daylight and improve the human experience in buildings. SageGlass controls the sunlight and heat that enter a building, significantly reducing energy consumption while improving people’s comfort and well-being. SageGlass can reduce a building’s cooling load by 20% and HVAC requirements up to 30%. It is a smarter, more elegant solution than conventional sun controls such as mechanical window shades, blinds and louvers. Now celebrating its 10th year anniversary shipping commercial SageGlass, the company was founded in 1989 and is headquartered near Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., in the heart of “the Silicon Valley of the window industry.” SAGE is a wholly owned subsidiary of Saint-Gobain of Paris, the world’s largest building materials company.// For more information visit: Website: www.sageglass.com Twitter: twitter.com/Sage_Glass Facebook: Facebook.com/SageGlass LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/sage-electrochromics-inc. YouTube: Youtube.com/SAGEElectrochromics