News

Mentioning no glass on a glass industry conference and talking only about glass on a non-glass conference... This is how September has started.

Agnes had been invited to give a keynote speech on Glass and Glazing Federation's Autumn Conference, on 8th of September 2011. Rules and regulations are often regarded necessary in order to control safety, adequacy, quality of glazed structures. Meanwhile, our field is about constant innovation, pushing the limits, experimenting with new technology. What was impossible yesterday, became possible today. Over-regulated environment may cut out the opportunity to explore the unusual and make it work. Regulations tend to assume that every structure can be boxed into a well-defined case, allowing no room for the odd ones. Being comfortably fitted out with regulations also makes us relying on them unconditionally, many times without questioning their continuing validity. Instead, encouraging critical thinking, ensuring by knowledge sharing and open discussions that informed decision can be made, are better ways to achieve the desired safety, adequacy and quality. Good rules and regulations include flexibility and requirement for peer reviews.

The second conference, Light Middle East, took place on 12th of September, attended by artificial light source manufacturers, light designers, building energy consumption analysts. Agnes's speech, "Balancing transparency and energy performance of glazing in facade design and planning" explained current technologies and strategies to optimize the transmittance characteristics of glazed structures in the visible wavelengths while maximize their reflectivity for the near infra-red wavelengths.