The basics: The InterContinental San Francisco, the largest hotel to open in the city in nearly 20 years, inaugurated Feb. 28 and features a 32-story glass tower. According to the San Francisco Business Times, it took more than 10 years and $200 million to complete the project. The architects extended the exterior transparency to its interior finishes with a glass-railed, three-story grand stairway, glass panel doors outside the spa, floor-to-ceiling windows in the fitness center and a pool illuminated by skylights. The exterior skin, glass and metal panels cover about 130,000 square feet at a cost of about $15 million.
The players: Design architect, Patri Merker Architects, San Francisco; architect of record, Hornberger + Worstell, San Francisco; glass fabricator, Viracon, Owatonna, Minn.; curtain wall design and glazing contractor, Architectural Glass & Aluminum, Alameda, Calif.; curtain wall fabrication, Midwest Curtainwalls Inc., Cleveland; contractor, Webcor Builders, San Francisco; metal panel systems, C/S Erectors, San Ramon, Calif.; metal panel fabrication, Pohl USA Inc., West Valley City, Utah.
The glass and systems: The heat-strengthened, 1-inch insulating glass units result in a series of translucent crystal-quality surfaces faceting along the perimeter wall. The outboard ¼-inch Azure lites are tinted, and the inboard ¼-inch lites are clear. The vertical and horizontal extrusion of reversed crystals is briefly interrupted by metal wind control devices. The design is accomplished through the use of a dual structural support system of concrete core, moment-frame columns and gravity-only columns on the outside edges. Post-tensioned slabs of minimum thickness allow the unitized curtain wall to be largely free of sprandrels. Floor-to-ceiling windows are in every guest and meeting room.

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