Silicone Solutions for New Poly Plaza

Resembling a folded Chinese lantern, the New Poly Plaza boasts the world’s largest flexible cable glass curtain walland Beijing’s highest skyscraping atrium. The building contains a total floor area of 10,600 square meters and is designed to integrate the building with its surroundings by blurring indoor and outdoor spaces. At 90 meters high and 68 meters wide, its glass curtain wall is universally regarded as a creative and industrial achievement.

Structural Sealant Offers Solution
The building’s glass curtain wall features a truss-free cable net structure, upon which pliable steel cables are fixed between glass panels. Steel cables form a complete single-layer, dual-way pulling glass curtain wall. This huge cable net curtain wall can bend as one meter under windy conditions.

To bear the stress on the cable glass curtain wall, Dow Corning recommended its one-component Dow Corning® 995 Silicone Structural Sealant, which is able to adapt to large joint displacements and offers better displacement capacity than other sealants. In tests, Dow Corning’s structural sealant has proven effective for normal and protective assembling, and has been used around the world.

Travertine Blinds Presents Challenge
For the first time in China, vertical stone sun blinds were used on the west and south sides of the New Poly Plaza. The blinds were made of an imported Roman buff travertine. Energy-effective and environmentally friendly, the use of stone blinds ensures maximum sunlight in winters, protective shading in summers(which saves on heating and air conditioning costs), and reduces light pollution on its surroundings.

However, a buff travertine is susceptible to contamination. Organic materials contained in many sealants can infiltrate the stone, forming a black belt on the stone’s exterior. This significantly affects the appearance of the stone and creates difficulties in maintaining a building’s outer wall. Currently, there are no effective solutions to removing the plasticizing agents inside a stone’s gaps.

Silicone Sealants Improve Maintenance and Appearance
To prevent contamination, the only choice is to use a high-performance sealant free of plasticizing agents. Dow Corning® 991 Silicone Hi-performance Sealant does not contain plasticizing agents and features anti-contamination and anti-sagging properties. Application of Dow Corning® 991 on the New Poly Plaza reduced the frequency and maintenance costs of building facade cleaning compared to lower-quality sealants.

Although transparent sealants are commonly thought to be appropriate for multi-support glass curtain walls, several studies demonstrate that almost all stone gaps turn yellow or darken after 1-2 years of application. Ultraviolet radiation also easily penetrates transparent sealants, deteriorating the base material. Projects incorporating black Dow Corning silicone sealants preserve a building’s original appearance, marking black silicone the material of choice among designers over time.

Dow Corning Sealants Support Architectural Breakthrough
New Poly Plaza was successfully completed in 2006. Dow Corning® 991 Silicone Hi-performance sealant and Dow Corning® 995 Silicone Structural Sealant have protected the surface and waterproofing, safe-guarding the building against Northern China’s harsh weather conditions. These sealants also make the largest atrium in Asia possible, with both the building’s height and area ranked the top in the world. The building marks an architectural breakthrough in construction technology, creative design and industrial records in China.