Grove at Grand Bay’s swirl-shaped towers take hurricane-resistance to new heights while earning LEED Gold certification
PITTSBURGH, April 12, 2018 – Grove at Grand Bay, an upscale 98-unit Florida condominium featuring an innovative hurricane-resistant design and Solarban® 72 Starphire® glass by Vitro Architectural Glass (formerly PPG Glass), was named the 2017 Building of the Year, U.S. Southeast Region, by The Architect’s Newspaper.
Located in Coconut Grove and designed by renowned Danish architectural firm Bjarke Ingels Group, Grove at Grand Bay consists of two 20-story towers coiled into identical tornado-like twists that provide a stylized buffer against hurricane-force winds while offering residents optimal views of the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay.
Windows and 12-foot-high floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors for the $400-million project were fabricated by Tecnoglass with hurricane-resistant, insulated Solarban 72 glass laminated with three lites of Starphire glass. The railings and balconies are laminated with two lites of Starphire glass. Tecnoglass engineers designed the doors using three pieces of ¼-inch Solarban 72 glass.
Photography by Tom Kessler
A composite core of concrete and steel internal plates for the towers’ shear walls enabled the building engineers to limit their thickness to 30 inches, less than half the 6-foot thickness required by local building codes for such structural reinforcements. Additional stability is provided by the installation of cambered, or arched, floor plates and pressure-injected auger-cast piles averaging 80 feet in depth.
When Hurricane Irma’s 100-mph winds made landfall in September 2017, Jason Gilg, senior development manager of Terra Group, the building’s owner, said Grove at Grand Bay “did extremely well—including the hurricane-impact glass.”
The Building of the Year award recognizes distinct innovation, creative use of new technology, sustainability and superlative design. It is one of several categories in The Architect’s Newspaper’s annual “Best of Design Awards,” which showcase great buildings and building elements.
The condominium had previously received several honors, including two Architizer A+Awards (Jury Prize Winner and the Popular Choice Winner in the Engineering category), the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) of New York’s 2016 engineering excellence award and a 2016 Concrete Reinforced Steel Institute (CRSI) Honors Award in the Residential Building category.
The first LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold Certified residential building in Miami-Dade County, Grove at Grand Bay incorporates multiple sustainable design measures. They include an 80 percent reduction in the amount of potable water for irrigation and the installation of high-efficiency chillers and variable-speed exhaust in the heating and cooling systems. The project also features recycled and locally sourced materials, and sustainably harvested wood.
Completed in 2016, Grove at Grand Bay is the tallest twisting structure in the Western Hemisphere and the first of its kind in the United States.
Formulated with the industry’s most advanced triple-silver coating that is engineered for use on Starphire Ultra-Clear® glass, Solarban 72 glass has visible light transmittance (VLT) of 71 percent with a solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) of 0.30 and a light-to-solar gain (LSG) ratio of 2.37.
To learn more about Solarban 72 glass or Starphire glass by Vitro Architectural Glass, visit www.vitroglazings.com or call (855) VTRO-GLS (887-6457).
About Vitro Architectural Glass
Vitro Architectural Glass, part of Vitro, S.A.B. de C.V. (BMV:VITROA), is a new organization created from Vitro’s acquisition of PPG’s flat glass business unit. Now the largest company of its kind in the Americas, Vitro Architectural Glass manufactures industry-leading brands such as Solarban®, Sungate® and Starphire Ultra-Clear® glasses at U.S. plants in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; Fresno, California; Salem, Oregon; and Wichita Falls, Texas. The company also operates one of the world’s largest glass research and development facilities in Pittsburgh and four residential glass fabrication plants in Canada. For more information, please visit www.vitroglazings.com.
Solarban, Starphire and Starphire Ultra-Clear are registered trademarks owned by Vitro.
LEED—an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design—is a registered trademark of the U.S. Green Building Council.
The PPG Logo is a registered trademark of PPG Industries Ohio, Inc.
