Demystify the Performance Mock-Up
A façade looks perfect on drawings. The question is: how will it perform when exposed to wind, rain, building movement, and temperature extremes? That is the purpose of a Performance Mock-Up (PMU). PMU testing is much more than a contractual requirement or a final pass/fail exercise. Air infiltration, water penetration, structural wind load, interstory movement, […]
Visual Mock-Up Process
Every major facade project has a moment where the design stops being a drawing and becomes a physical object you can stand in front of, touch, and review. That’s the visual mock-up – VMU. Done well, it resolves specification ambiguity before fabrication starts, aligns the owner’s visual expectations with what the system can actually deliver. […]
WHTB Now Covers the Unitized Facade Chain
Most people in the glass business never see the inside of a facade factory. They sell glass, they discuss specifications over email. But the moment aluminum meets glass and becomes a unitized panel — the moment a building’s skin is actually assembled — that happens somewhere most of us have never stood. From the last […]
Bending Glass in Three Dimensions: Inside WHTB’s Ginza Project
Stand at the corner of Ginza’s main shopping street and look up. The facade above you doesn’t sit flat against the building: it curves outward, folds back in, catches the light differently depending on where you’re standing https://www.tiffany.com/stores/en/japan/tiffany-ginza-8075 From a distance it looks like a single fluid surface. Up close, it’s hundreds of individual glass […]
Retrofit Glass Facades in Canada
Canada has thousands of commercial towers built between 1975 and 2000. Their glass facades are aging, leaking, and even falling. Many buildings were landmarks when they were built. Today, they face a different kind of reckoning — one measured in kw/h, carbon emissions, and compliance deadlines. While, the retrofit wave has arrived, and Montreal is […]
BIPV: When Glass Façades Become Power Plants
For decades, façades were judged by two things: how they look and how they perform. Today, there’s a third dimension: Can your glass façade generate energy? That’s where Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) comes in — turning glass façades into active power-generating systems. The market value could rise from about USD 33 billion in 2026, to over […]
Why Do Some Glass Façades Look Perfect in Renderings… but Fail on Site?
← Back to Insights / Facade Engineering Every façade looks perfect in renderings. Clean lines. Seamless reflections. Consistent color. But once the building is completed… something feels off. The color varies panel to panel. Reflections look distorted. Joints become visible. The original design intent is lost. So what happened? The uncomfortable truth Most […]