Someone spots a crack in an atrium roof and the first question is always whether it can be repaired. It’s a reasonable question to ask about most building elements. For overhead glass it has a short answer, and the short answer is usually no. That’s worth understanding properly, because the follow-up questions are the ones […]

Office atria had a strange few years. Buildings that were designed around a busy ground floor sat largely empty, maintenance budgets got trimmed because nobody was there to be inconvenienced, and the glass roof over the lobby dropped a long way down everyone’s list. Occupancy has come back, unevenly but genuinely, and a lot of […]

Ask the facilities team in a building with a large atrium where the energy goes, and the glass roof is usually high on the list. They’re generally right, and it’s not only a winter problem. The same roof that bleeds heat in January turns the space into a greenhouse by late June. Upgrading it is […]