Architecture has always been more than just aesthetics. Today, it’s about environmental responsibility too. Sustainability is no longer a bonus; it’s a baseline. Whether you’re designing a towering commercial project or a local community hub, climate, human health, and ecosystem goals are critical. But with so many materials and certifications to consider, where should you focus your energy to make the biggest impact? This article approaches three essential “ingredients” of sustainable glass architecture:
We’ll wrap up with a summary of the ways that Walker’s glass products can contribute to LEED® certification. You can read through the whole article (our writer would love that), or jump straight to the section that’s most useful to you.
Sustainability Resources in This Article
For your convenience, we’ve compiled a list of the sustainability resources discussed in this article, with direct links to learn more and access your copy.
1. Climate Health: Reducing the Carbon Footprint
Embodied Carbon
Reducing a building’s global warming potential begins before construction even starts, by choosing materials with lower embodied carbon, i.e. lower emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases during production. Glass typically contributes 2% to 5% of a new building’s embodied carbon, according to Glass Magazine’s “Architect’s Guide to Glass Sustainability”. That might seem modest, but every bit matters when it comes to bringing down a project’s carbon footprint.
You’ll want to look for three main things to reducing embodied carbon from glass:
They say you can’t manage what you can’t measure, and EPDs are one of the best tools for measuring embodied carbon in glass. While industry-average EPDs are available for flat glass, product-specific EPDs present a more accurate picture. Walker offers third-party verified EPDs for each of its glass and mirror lines, available on request.
2. Lower-Carbon Float Production
About 75% of the embodied carbon in flat glass comes from the float process: melting and producing the raw material. (Source: Glass Magazine) Given the intense heat required to melt silica into liquid form, that’s no surprise.
Fortunately, in the past year our suppliers have invested in lower-carbon manufacturing methods that produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than traditional processes, bringing them within the GSA’s most stringent limits for global warming potential. These improvements are carried through as the glass passes through Walker’s processing stages. The final result is a glass with significantly lighter contribution to a building’s embodied carbon footprint.
3. Shorter Transportation
Every mile that a building material travels adds to its global warming potential. With multi-stage components like windows, that can add up to a big chunk of the final carbon footprint. Sourcing within North America can help reduce the total mileage required to bring goods from the factory to the construction site.
Walker Glass sources from North American float manufacturers and our glass is destined for projects within the United States and Canada.
Operational Carbon
Once the building is up and running, glass products with a low-e coating can improve energy efficiency by reducing heating and cooling loads. Architects can leverage this improved thermal performance to include more glass in the building envelope, leading to potential energy savings on lighting and ventilation. For example, ZGF took this approach with the Amazon headquarters in Arlington VA, helping to reduce the building’s overall energy consumption by 24% compared to typical energy loads for buildings of the same size.
Walker’s AviProtek® and Walker Textures® brands offer the option to add Solarban® low-e coatings on surface two, combining thermal performance, daylight optimization, and bird collision deterrence in a single product.
2. Human Health
Designers and architects are increasingly attuned to the ways buildings affect human health. Modern designs emphasize natural daylighting, outdoor views, and human-safe materials, among many other considerations. When selecting materials for a human-centred building project, a few key indicators are especially useful:
1. HPD® (Health Product Declaration®)
HPD®s reveal the substances present in building materials and their potential impacts on human health. They are valuable tools for assessing air quality and safety within spaces that incorporate the materials, and they can help projects earn credits under LEED, WELL, the Living Building Challenge, and other green building rating systems.
Walker can provide HPD®s for all our Walker Textures® and AviProtek® products. Additionally, we are unique in offering an HPD® for mirror. Just like EPDs, these documents are available on request.
2. VOC Testing and Non-Emitting Materials
VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) are carbon-based chemicals that frequently pose risks to human health, either alone or through reactions with other molecules. (Source: Living Building Challenge Early Project Guidebook)
To minimize VOC exposure, prioritize building materials that meet one of the following criteria:
- The product comes with VOC test records.
- The material is inherently non-emitting.
Glass is inherently non-emitting, so you can take for granted that uncoated glass products like Walker Textures® and AviProtek® glass are free of VOCs.
3. Daylighting, Transparency and Glare Reduction
Experts like Lisa Heschong, Dr. Helen Sanders, PhD., and many others agree: access to natural daylight and outdoor views is crucial for maintaining healthy circadian rhythms and overall human wellbeing. Effective lighting design is recognized with LEED credits, architectural awards, and higher building valuations.
There’s an art to finding the right balance between direct sunlight, diffused light, and views. Having the right documentation can help. When you’re sourcing glass for windows and skylights, look for product statistics on these factors:
- Visible Light Transmittance (VLT) measures how much visible-spectrum light (0.4 to 0.7 μm) passes through the glass. Higher VLT improves occupant wellbeing by maximizing natural daylight.
Note: Acid-etching glass does not significantly reduce VLT. - Haze refers to the scattering of light as it passes through glass. Higher haze levels create more even light distribution and reduce glare, resulting in more comfortable environments.
Acid-etched glass diffuses light more effectively than unetched glass, resulting in higher haze values. - Transparency indicates the ability of a material to transmit views. It enables a visual connection between occupants and their environment, which can help regulate circadian rhythms, and add greatly to a building’s appeal.
Patterned and bird friendly glass can still provide the same benefits as fully transparent glass. Most AviProtek® bird friendly patterns cover less than 2% of the glass surface, so they maintain clear outdoor views while enhancing collision deterrence.
Technical Specifications
Technical specifications for VLT, haze and surface coverage (transparency) can be found in the technical documents at the bottom of our product pages, or you can use these shortcuts:
- Walker Textures®
- AviProtek® Bird Friendly Glass
If you’re interested in daylighting design, you may enjoy …
Seven Golden Rules for Great Daylighting in Architecture
We interviewed daylighting expert Lisa Heschong, who quite literally wrote the book on daylighting in architecture. The resulting article has become our most popular blog post of all time, and for good reason. It distills Lisa Heschong’s most essential advice for designing buildings that optimize natural light for human health and enjoyment into seven actionable steps.
3. Ecosystem Health and Local Environments
While broad climate concerns often dominate sustainability conversations, local and regional environmental impacts are equally important. How can you reduce a building’s impact on local air, water, wildlife, and soil? The answer lies in a two-pronged approach, addressing both the sourcing of building materials and their ultimate use on site.
Responsible Sourcing
A project’s environmental impact starts long before construction begins. Poor upstream practices can undermine sustainability efforts later, so it’s crucial to research the production of the materials during your specification stage. Three useful questions to ask:
- Where was the material produced, and what kind of labour standards are in place in its country of origin?
- What local regulations exist to control pollution at the manufacturing site?
- Has the manufacturer published a Sustainability Action Plan?
Walker takes responsible manufacturing seriously. Even if it weren’t a company priority, the labour and environmental regulation in our home base of Montreal, Canada, would require clean and ethical standards. We’re dedicated to not only meeting, but outperforming these regulations, and we’ve published a detailed report outlining our responsible manufacturing practices.
On the Project Site: Reducing Bird Mortality
Architecture can pose a threat to local wildlife, especially birds. Collisions with glass rank among the top three causes of bird mortality, along with habitat loss and predation by domestic cats. In response, the building industry has seen a bloom in bird friendly glass products over recent years and bird friendly design criteria are increasingly present in building codes, municipal regulation, green building accreditation requirements and project standards for major architectural firms.
But what actually qualifies as bird friendly glass? And what’s the right solution for your building project? Here are some points to start with:
Understand Local Requirements
Start by researching the bird friendly requirements for your project’s location. This may be state-wide, municipal, or specific to a certain property. For example, some universities have integrated bird friendly design into their campus design guidelines.
Walker has created a series of eBooks to help architects determine the bird friendly requirements for their projects, including direct links to local regulation and guidelines. These documents are regionally-specific, so they reflect the demands of your particular market. Known as The AviProtek® eBooks of Bird Friendly Glass, they are available for free download from our website.
Look for Proof of Effectiveness
While there are many new products hitting the bird safe market, few have been proven to reduce bird collisions in real-world scenarios. Ticking the boxes on legislative requirements is a good place to start, but for validated effectiveness you’ll want to choose a glass with a solid track record. Look for success stories that include collision monitoring and feedback from building occupants.
Walker has been in this business since the beginning, which has given us a unique opportunity to track the long-term outcomes of installing AviProtek® bird friendly glass. We’ve compiled these findings into a reference document called The Effectiveness of AviProtek® Bird Friendly Glass. The statistics in this report include strike rates from twenty different sites across North America, as reported by on-site building owners, researchers and management teams. It also identifies the exact glass composition in place in each project, to help architects choose the right solutions for their building projects.
Green Building Certification
LEED Certification
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) remains the gold standard for green building certification in North America, with more than 7,000 new certified projects each year. LEED-certified buildings also command 11.1% higher average rental rates and a 21.4% higher sales price per square foot compared to non-certified buildings, according to this report from real estate brokerage firm Cushman & Wakefield. No wonder building owners and design teams often target LEED certification as part of their project goals.
Walker’s acid-etched and bird friendly glass can help contribute to LEED credits in several categories, including:
- Energy and Atmosphere:
– Optimize Energy Performance - Materials and Resources:
– Environmental Product Declarations
– Material Ingredients - Indoor Environmental Quality:
– Low-emitting materials
– Thermal Comfort
– Daylight
– Quality Views - Innovation
– Bird Collision Deterrence
For a more detailed breakdown of how Walker Glass products can support LEED accreditation, we invite you to read our article, “Designing for LEED Credits with Walker Glass Products”.
Sustainability isn’t just a checklist; it’s a commitment to building spaces that care for people, the planet, and future generations. By choosing materials thoughtfully and designing with clear environmental, human, and ecological goals in mind, architects can create projects that leave a lasting, positive legacy. Whether you’re aiming for LEED certification or pushing your practice toward a greener future, glass can be a vital, and surprisingly versatile part of the recipe.
Now, we want to hear your perspective. What other green building certifications and documents are you looking for, beyond the ones covered in this article? Let us know how we can support your sustainable glass architecture projects!
