Boyd Temple

The building

Boyd Temple is a house of worship, and worship buildings put glass in a position that almost nothing else does: a tall volume, a congregation seated still beneath it for an hour at a time, and windows that are frequently the most valuable thing in the room.

Why the glass is a problem

Start with the people. Someone sitting in a pew cannot move out of the sun. Radiant heat through a sunlit window is felt directly on skin and clothing, and it is felt long before a thermostat registers anything, which is why the rows nearest the glass empty first and stay empty. In a high space the problem compounds — warm air rises into the roof volume and the cooling has to shift a great deal of it to make any difference at head height.

Then the glare. A sanctuary is arranged so that everyone looks in one direction, and if there is a bright window behind or beside the chancel, the congregation spends the service looking into it. Anything projected onto a screen washes out completely.

Then the damage. Colored, painted and leaded glass is not indefinitely stable: enamelled and painted detail degrades under ultraviolet, and the textiles a congregation accumulates — vestments, banners, altar cloths, hangings, carpet — are dyed materials sitting in direct sun for decades. Most of them cannot be replaced, and some of them were made by people the congregation knew.

There is a plain financial dimension as well. Most congregations run on giving, and the building is used hard for a few hours a week and stands empty the rest of the time, so the cooling plant is sized for a peak that occurs rarely and is expensive every time it runs.

What window film does about it

On clear glazing, film is straightforward: it takes out the near infrared that carries the heat and effectively all of the ultraviolet that does the fading, and it can be specified to bring visible transmission down enough to make a bright window bearable without darkening the room.

Decorative glass needs more care, and this is where we would rather turn work down than get it wrong. Film cannot be applied to irregular, painted or leaded surfaces — it needs a flat, sound, continuous face to bond to. Where a sanctuary has protective outer glazing in front of the decorative glass, filming that outer layer shields the artwork behind it and is the right answer. Where it does not, the honest advice is to treat the clear glazing elsewhere in the building and leave the decorative windows to a conservator.

One thing worth raising with any assembly building in Hawaii: film is also made in safety and security grades, which are thicker and bonded so that if a pane is broken the fragments are held on the film rather than dropped into the room. That is a different product from solar film and it is specified for a different reason, but for a building with large panes, a seated congregation under them and a hurricane season every year, it is a question worth asking at the same time.

We have worked on temples, churches and memorial buildings across Hawaii. See our commercial and institutional work, or ask us to come and look.