Hartford Fire Insurance Company Bldg (1921) Hartford, CT

Facade Consultant:  Wiss, Janney and Eistner Associates, Inc.

Architect:  SLAM Collaborative

Project: Replaced single glazed historic wood windows with new aluminum replica units made by Graham (York, PA).  New windows utilized a hybrid resulting in a COG R-Factor of 17. STC estimated at +39.

In 2017 when the Office of Sustainability at The Hartford Insurance Group did an energy audit of their campus, they realized they had some real challenges in bringing their existing building inventory up to modern day performance standards. Chief among the energy wasting culprits was their Historic Office Building on Asylum Avenue, which was constructed in the early 1900’s, and still had its original wood windows in place, with ¼ clear glass.

Within the Office of Sustainability, in 2019 The Hartford announced some very aggressive Climate Change Goals for their home campus. These carbon reduction goals rivaled those of other large worldwide insurers, as well as those goals being promoted by Big Technology, companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft. By 2040, all of The Hartford’s building inventory, at home, and abroad, would need to be Carbon Neutral.

This was an aggressive pathway, especially when you consider that the Paris Climate accord had set the worlds net zero goal for 2050. After much discussion, design, and engineering, The Harford began downsizing their Heating, Cooling and Ventilation systems in each of their buildings. This was step one. In order to be able to downsize the heating and cooling loads, The Hartford must upgrade a number of their facades and envelope components and their obsolete facades.

The only way to achieve these goals was by sharply increasing the thermal performance values of the window and curtain wall systems on the campus. At the Greenbuild Conference in 2019, The Hartford committed to utilizing Vacuum Glass to meet these challenges.

The Historic Office Building needed a facelift. New windows were built by Graham Windows in York, PA. These windows were glazed with a HYBRID Insulated Glass Unit of one piece of interior 8.3 MM Vacuum Glass, mated to another piece of outboard 5/16” VE-1-2M high performance low e coating. The units were insulated in Minnesota by Viracon, and paired with the 8.3 MM Vacuum Glass, the tested HYBRID unit exceeded a center of glass R Factor of an astonishing, and previously unheard of 17!