“We spend 90 percent of our time indoors,” said Rahul Bammi, View’s chief business officer. “The things that really matter are light, air quality, temperature and sound. We impact at least three of those in a positive way.”
The study at DFW, conducted by a Cornell University design professor, also found that surface temperatures on seats and carpeting near the new gate glass were 10F to 15F lower, boosting dwell time by 53 percent over that at a nearby gate with regular glass. Spending around the cooler gate rose as well.
With their long warrens of glass walls, airports may seek to bolster revenues with this technology. View was, unsurprisingly, eager to help in the DFW experiment. “People have been studying green buildings for 50 years but there’s never been a comprehensive study on dynamic glass,” Bammi said.
The additional revenue may come at exactly the right time for America’s airports. Such glass could boost food and retail sales at a time when airports have been taking a financial hit. The rapid adoption of ride-sharing services has dented parking revenues, a massive source of cash for airports. Parking and ground transport accounts for about 40 percent of North American airport revenues, while spending on food and beverages is the fastest-growing portion of their concessions business, according to the most recent survey by Airports Council International-North America.
View’s “smart” glass installations all have Internet protocol and electrical power connections to allow for minute adjustments and programming. “It’s changing glass from essentially a dumb product to a smart product,” Bammi said. Privately held View doesn’t release any financial data but said it’s provided glass for 400 projects since 2012. It’s also doubling the size of its production facility in Olive Branch, Mississippi.
The glass has been purchased by various companies and schools, such as Boston Logan Airport; Delta Air Lines Inc. (for a lounge at the Seattle airport); Duke University; FedEx Corp., Levi’s Stadium, LinkedIn Corp.; and Wells-Fargo & Co.
San Francisco International Airport is spending $3 million for View’s electrochromatic glass in the $2.4 billion overhaul of Terminal 1. In coming weeks, DFW plans to solicit bids for about 500,000 square feet of such glass to use in gate and concession areas with sun exposure.
Airports are just one of several markets “smart glass” makers are targeting. Beyond addressing human comforts, View pitches its glass to developers and others as a tool to lower heating and cooling costs by as much as 20 percent. Even with installation costs that are 20 percent to 30 percent higher than traditional glass, the expected energy savings over a building’s life make the choice “a no-brainer” for many commercial projects, Bammi said.
Customer awareness of such glass products is slowly growing, but most people don’t realize that the construction industry has begun adopting such glass, Bammi said. “The most common response we get is, ‘Why didn’t someone think of this before?’” he said.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.