SentryGlas® provides enhanced strength, edge performance and visual clarity at The Shanghai Tower.

The Shanghai Tower in China, is 632 metres (2,073 ft) high and has 128 stories, with a total floor area of 380,000 m2(4,090,000 sq ft), providing multiple separate zones for office, retail and leisure use.

The Tower takes the form of nine cylindrical buildings stacked atop one another, all enclosed by the inner layer of the glass façade, which completes a 120-degree twist as it rises.

Both layers of the glass façade are transparent, which is unique as most buildings have only a single façade of highly reflective glass to lower heat absorption. The double layer of glass eliminates the need for either layer to be opaque and reduces the need for indoor air conditioning and heating.

Laminated safety glass with SentryGlas® ionoplast interlayer has played a key role in enabling the design of the twisting, all-glass double skin façade on The Shanghai Tower.

SentryGlas® interlayer was chosen primarily for its visual clarity in combination with low-iron glass, the enhanced strength it provided to the overall glass assembly, and because it eliminated edge delamination due to the exposed edges of the glass.

Designed with 20,589 wall panels with 7,000 unique shapes, the double skin glass façade is suspended from above on massive cantilevered trusses and stabilised by hoop rings and struts. The circular inner glass façade required 14% less glass than a square building of the same floor area.