ABSTRACT
Glass made from sand, lime and soda ash has been known in Egypt for 5000 years, although it probably originated in Assyria and Phoenicia. The earliest manmade glass was used to glaze stone beads, later to make glass beads (circa 2500 BC), but it was not until about
Introduction Glass, as exemplified by The Shard in London (Fig. 7.1), is now the fashionable architectural cladding material of choice for the twenty-first century. The Shard, designed by Renzo Piano and completed in 2012, is 309 m high and its totally glazed façade comprises 56,000 m2 of glass. It is currently the tallest building in the European Union.
