It sparkles and looks like and a crystal!

Sparkling Hill Wellness Resort and Spa

The twinkling glass was designed to be the centerpiece of the three-story crystal-shaped glass atrium at Sparkling Hill Resort – the support for the glass was meant to disappear.

There were some project challenges that we worked in collaboration with Cannon Design from the initial design stage to solve.

Key issues included: the glass had to be seated on multiple and varying planes to create a crystal-like sparkle; site location on the top of a mountain meant extremely high wind loads (approximately 4.5 kPA); a design objective to maximize transparency and tight project timing meant design had to go from initial concept to install in approximately 8 months.

Working with Erdevicki Structural Engineering, we created a tension cable support assembly that supported four panes of glass at its meeting point and featured the following benefits:

• Matrix based on the inherent stability of a triangle.
• Pretension to loads up to 40kN and tested to loads up to 100kN.
• Provisions for positive and negative wind loads, temperature fluctuations, and building movement by deflection in the design loads.