Zibaldone Quattro

This is the Boston Courthouse building. The entire façade facing the water is a glass semi-circle. I found this interesting because of the connection between the mullions and the glazing. Looking at the photo beneath, it is obvious that the steel frame (the plane with the lateral bracing) is not directly welded to the mullions. I was able to ask someone about this and they described that it is so that the glazing plane (the actual glass) can actually shift independently of the steel frame. Because of the large shift in temperatures that the Boston climate faces in a year, the glazing needs to have larger room for flexibility. This becomes rather important because of the sheer scale of the building. As you can see from the above photo from the exterior, it is a big building, and the large semi-circle creates this space outside to be utilized many different ways.