Enclosing historic house in glass-walled structure

Sarah Price <sprice [at] rogersark__org> writes

>Our museum is planning a major expansion and one of the design ideas
>that is under discussion (sometimes argument) is enclosing our
>historic brick home within a larger glass-walled structure. ...

There are many potential consequences of doing what your museum is
proposing, including green-house heating of the inside of the glass
structure, condensation on the inside of the glass in cold weather,
difficulty in controlling glare, potential damage to the brickwork,
etc.  I would imagine that the energy costs for air conditioning a
glass structure would be monumental, and that surrounding the
original structure with a glass one would  make environmental
control of the original building extremely complex.  You need an
experienced architect and/or engineer to assess the possibilities
from a factual point of view, hopefully before people take sides and
become wedded to their own points of view.

Barbara Appelbaum
Appelbaum and Himmelstein
444 Central Park West
New York, NY  10025
212-666-4630


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 21:43
               Distributed: Wednesday, February 13, 2008
                       Message Id: cdl-21-43-002
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