San Diego, California · 2023
Harbor Glass
A waterfront hotel whose luminous, geometric façade balances salt air, solar load, and a guest-room module that had to be built at pace.
The commission
Harbor Glass sits on San Diego Bay. The architectural ambition — a luminous, faceted glass skin — had to survive marine corrosion, wind-driven rain, and a tight guest-room grid. Verticea provided façade design, detailing, and engineering from schematic design through opening.
Guest-room modules are a unitised window wall with sliding door systems, glass balustrades, and a coated aluminium expressed frame. Public levels use a structurally glazed curtain wall with stainless fixings specified for a marine environment. We modelled condensation risk at slab edges, specified thermally broken frames, and coordinated the interface with the hotel’s chilled-beam plant.
Construction support included factory visits, weather testing, and a site presence during the first twenty floors of installation — the period when geometry, gaskets, and setting-out either lock in or fail.
Key outcomes
- Marine-grade coatings and stainless hardware
- Guest-room module designed for rapid installation
- Condensation-risk modelling at every slab edge
Expertise provided: Façade consulting · Thermal & physics · Construction support
