TKTS, Times Square
The largest load-bearing glass structure in the world, the new TKTS booth in Times Square, supports glass benches atop two-inch-thick windows. Sounds delicate, but it regularly holds 500 foot-stomping Jumbotron watchers. For reinforcement, engineers at Dewhurst Macfarlane used a plastic film called SentryGlas Plus. The film is 100 times the strength of typical laminates and binds sheets together into structural pieces that are five times as strong as a wooden frame. The TKTS booth is a window onto new structural uses for glass, inspiring the firm to drape steel canopies on glass columns at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts this year. Are all-glass towers next? Says structural engineer Michael Ludvik, “You could literally make a skyscraper.”
