Kingdom of Magic Mirrors. Rationing, Monitoring, Legal and Technical Expertise

Translucent facade design is perhaps the only sphere of construction where technical regulation is in its infancy. The regulatory system is either absent or is borrowed from foreign regulations, or is in the process of development and formation.

The very principle of technical regulation in the construction industry implies strict adherence to the technical processes and regulations that are regulated by normative documents that establish uniform national standards (standards and codes of practice). The main stages of the construction process, such as design, manufacturing, installation and maintenance of building structures (translucent façade among them) are defined as the efficiency of the investment in the creation of these buildings, and their safe operation.

The main objective of translucent cladding structures is to protect the building’s interior spaces from external climatic influences. A no less important issue is to create the architectural image of the building and to express its architectural concept. In the design and manufacture of the facade structure there may often occur mistakes and miscalculations. As a result, they may affect the appearance of the building that does not meet modern principles of construction and architecture.

Today one can frequently witness structures that completely lose their appearance due to the facade optical distortion. What causes these sad consequences such as the absence of the necessary regulatory system, the violation of the manufacturing technology or design errors? This article is just an attempt to provide partial answers to these questions. One of the objectives of technical regulation system in construction is to ensure the reliability and quality of the constructions, buildings and structures. The goal of the authors of this article is to assess the condition of the technical regulation in the field of facade translucent structures (FTS) only.

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Written by: V.S.Roife, Doctor of Technical Sciences;
A.A.Verkhovskii, Head of the “Protecting Designs of High-Rise and Unique Buildings” Lab,
Ph.D. NIISPH of the Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences;
A.Y.Bezrukov, Engineer