Shaw Center for the Arts

The Shaw Centre for the Arts is a 30-metre-high, five-storey building that houses an art museum, a theatre, an education centre with classrooms and offices. The multi-award-winning 125,000-square-metre building in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, opened in 2005. It is one of the largest structures in the United States clad with U-glass. At one end is the theatre with a box office in the upper area. The opposite end extends over the lobby and stands as a 12-metre-high cantilever over a 1930s car park.

According to the architects, the façade is intended to evoke local associations and remind viewers of the nearby meandering Mississippi River. Its outer skin is clad with hundreds of multi-layered LAMBERTS LINIT^®EcoGlass profiled glass panels. This glass is usually installed with the flanges facing inwards. However, to give the Shaw Centre's façade more contour, most of its profiles face outwards. Only on the lower floors do the flanges face inwards.

To test the glazing against hurricane-force winds, wind-driven rain and gusts of 160 km/h were simulated using a model with an old Douglas DC-3 aircraft propeller. The profiles are anchored to the structure with aluminium clamps at the required points to withstand the wind pressure prevailing in the hurricane zone of the building.