Seamless architecture: Innovative opaque to transparent material interfaces

This paper presents innovative seamless joints to integrate transparent windows within opaque walls while achieving structural, optical, and/or progressive transition between glass and opaque materials such as geopolymer concrete and advanced closed porosity ceramics. We have used casting and kiln forming processes to fabricate our prototypes and have already achieved strong bonds between glass and geopolymer cement and also glass-foam. Several formulations of Geopolymer (GP) based ceramics and Glass-Foam (GF) based ceramics were seamlessly interfaced with glass creating the desired structural and optical continuity, resulting in airtight and watertight transition between the materials without any mechanical joints or connective tissue. Our vision is to expand this technology to engage 3D manufacturing and other free-form fabrication technologies. This approach has many potential applications in the arts, industrial design, and architecture, permitting lower embodied and operating energy, construction details never imagined before, and surface conditions exhibiting multiple optical and structural characteristics.