Miami-Dade asks a window to survive a hurricane. The design asks it to disappear — and then cuts the roof open on top of that. The glazing is impact-rated throughout, the window-wall carries a Notice of Acceptance for ±130 psf, and a faceted glass lantern drops daylight into the middle of the plan.
Finished
Glass, from the only angle that shows it.
The roof glazing only resolves from above — from the street you cannot see it at all. Every one of these openings is a hole cut through a structural plane, framed, flashed and set to a High-Velocity Hurricane Zone envelope.
The glass
Craned in and set.
Every lite arrives finished and goes in once. The film ends where the work does — daylight coming through a hole that was cut for it.
Window wall
Crated, cut in, and standing.
The units arrive banded on pallets and leave as a wall. Every opening is set, shimmed and anchored to the structure before a single lite of glass goes in — the anchorage is what the pressure rating is actually testing, not the glass.
Specification
System
E.S. Windows ES-8000 aluminium window-wall
Product approval
Miami-Dade Notice of Acceptance
Design pressure
±130 psf
Zone
High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, impact-rated throughout
Envelope
NOA-approved waterproofing assemblies
Glazing values are taken from the product approval on file.
Built
How it went in.
01The window-wall elevation turns the curved end of the house into individual fabricated marks. Arched head pieces, doors, fixed lites, the steel tube and the project wind-pressure zones are coordinated on one sheet before the finished glazing can read as a single opening.02The faceted skylight resolved in top view, isometric and section. The 127°/53° geometry and the project-specific design pressures sit on the same sheet as the steel framing — the technical counterpart to the finished lantern in the next image.03The lantern. A faceted glass volume set into the white roof plane — every facet is a penetration through a waterproofed roof in a hurricane zone, which is why the detailing matters more than the glass.04The curved corner. Glass carried around a radius, under a cantilevered white plane.05From the street. The dark glazing sits flush in the white mass so the building reads as a solid with pieces removed.06Roof plane and glazing read as one surface from above.07Before glass: a roof opening formed and decked. Cutting a hole in a structural roof means adding steel around it, not leaving it out.08Before glass: the window-wall openings framed, every one a structural decision first.09Glazed corner, two walls of glass meeting with no column between them.10Looking up the glass from inside. The mullions carry the load; the glass carries the daylight.11A room delivered as glass on three sides, before a single finish went in.12Installed and reflecting. The neighboring street reads back off the outer lite.
