The most obvious benefit of glass, when used externally, is that it acts as a barrier between indoors and out, allowing you to see what is outside without the wind, rain, flying creatures and wind-blown objects coming in.
However, glass can be a barrier in other ways. To a certain extent, it is a thermal barrier, especially with double glazing, but it is also useful as a barrier to sound.
The last of these can be useful inside a building as well. Just as you might not want your office disturbed by the sounds of the street outside, so you may want to minimise noise drifting across the office, especially if it is an open-plan environment.
An obvious way to do that may involve having lots of physical barriers in place. But doors and walls reduce the amount of natural light you can enjoy and also make it harder to spot where colleagues are if you need to find them. That is an obvious reason why a glass partition wall can come in very useful.
It is worth understanding how glass acts as a sound barrier. Not every type of glass is particularly soundproof, but if it is made that way, it is very effective.
The key to this lies in understanding the nature of sound, which travels in waves through the air and causes particles in a medium to vibrate. These vibrations are then picked up by the ear, which transmits them to the brain which, in turn, recognises them.
However, this process can be disrupted by solid objects. In particular, it gets harder to pass through something the thicker it is. Some materials absorb sound, especially if they are soft (think of pillows), though obviously, this does not apply to glass.
Other techniques include resonance dampening, which converts sound energy into something else, such as heat, while conduction is the last factor, with substances that don’t conduct sound energy well helping to keep the volume down.
Normally, glass conducts sound very well, but this can be changed by making it thicker to begin with, as well as having it in multiple layers of varied thickness, which disrupts the sound conduction process.
Another element can be the addition of plastic laminates in between sheets of glass, which is very effective at impeding the vibrations of sound, while having double glazing creates a vacuum between the panes that sound cannot penetrate, a principle of sound insulation known as mechanical isolation.
In applying this principle, you can have glass partitions in place that enable meetings to take place in sight, but out of hearing. This creates important privacy so that visitors can conduct business without everyone being in earshot, important matters can be discussed openly and meetings with individuals can be carried out confidentially.
All these benefits can apply alongside the aesthetic benefits of having an office with lots of light and a feeling of openness, which helps people avoid feeling like what is often termed ‘silos’ in management speak. Having such partitions can, therefore, bring multiple benefits to your office environment.
