The most distinctive building in Sydney, Australia is the Sydney Opera House. As the soul of Australia, the Sydney Opera House is recognized as one of the seven wonders of the world of the 20th century. It has concert halls, opera houses, drama theatres, children's theaters and photo studios, auctions, concerts and other events are held every month or even every week, and it hosts more than 200,000 tourist groups every year.

The Sydney Opera House is a sculptural body built on the harbor like scattered white petals floating in the air. In addition to its exquisite appearance, its most exquisite feature is that no matter where you sit in the yard, you can clearly and unhindered enjoy the outdoor scenery, such as sailboats passing by and white seagulls flying by. Because the walls of the Opera House are over 60 meters high, almost all are made of transparent glass blocks. Thanks to this, a world record was set.

According to statistics, the area of ​​the Sydney Opera House is 6,625 square meters, consisting of more than 250,000 high-strength glass blocks. These glasses are distributed inside and outside the opera house. The interior architecture imitates Mayan culture and Aztec temples using imported glass inserts combined with unique Australian building materials that are both noble and practical. Glass on the outer surface of the building - double-glazed windows of a specialized French manufacturer - ordinary and topaz, in total 700 sizes and 2000 pieces.

The glass is so hard that even if the tile falls from the highest part of the opera house and hits the glass at the very bottom, the tourists next to it will not be harmed. So why doesn't such hard glass hurt people when it breaks?

Because the Sydney Opera House uses laminated glass. The so-called laminated glass is two or more pieces of glass with a layer of organopolymer interlayer between them. After special high-temperature pre-pressing (or evacuation) and processing at high temperature and high pressure, the glass and interlayer film are firmly glued together by composite glass products. As a kind of safety glass, the biggest advantage of laminated glass is that after the glass is broken by impact, due to the bonding effect of the PVB film sandwiched between two pieces of ordinary glass, it will not form sharp pieces that can hurt people. like regular glass.

In addition, laminated glass has excellent anti-seismic penetration ability, and its interlayer film can not only withstand the continuous attack of weapons such as hammers and axes, but also resist bullet penetration for a long time. In Europe and the United States, most architectural glass uses laminated glass.

TalkThe selection of laminated glass for the Sydney Opera House is a masterpiece by chief designer Jorn Utzon. When the Sydney Opera House was built in 1963, the glass manufacturing process used for the building was far from being developed and laminated glass was the most suitable choice at the time.

More than ten years later, tempered glass technology has become widespread and popularized in the world. Tempered glass is used in automotive, construction, aviation, electronics and other fields, especially in construction and automotive. Tempered glass has two advantages: firstly, its strength is several times higher than ordinary glass, and it is resistant to bending;

Secondly, the carrying capacity is increased, even if the tempered glass breaks, it will be small fragments without sharp corners, which greatly reduces the damage to the human body. The price of tempered glass is much lower than laminated glass: if tempered glass were available back then, Utzon would probably not have chosen laminated glass.