PriWatt Smart Film at the National Library of Medicine

Bethesda, Maryland · PriWatt self-adhesive film

One room, three kinds of meeting, one wall of glass

The National Library of Medicine, on the campus of the National Institutes of Health, is the largest biomedical library in the world: researchers, clinicians, educators and policymakers depend on what it holds. Its rooms have to do two things that usually pull against each other — keep people working in the open, and close when the conversation is confidential.

As part of a modernisation programme, ultra-clear PriWatt self-adhesive film was applied to the glass partitions that were already there.

Why not blinds, and why not new glass

Blinds and curtains solve the privacy and bring their own problems into a research building: they clutter the sightline, take the daylight with them, collect dust and need maintaining. Replacing the glazing would have solved it more thoroughly still — and added weeks of programme and disruption to an institution that does not stop.

The partitions stayed. Ultra-clear PriWatt self-adhesive film was applied to them, which turns a fixed pane into one that switches, without touching the frame or the schedule.

One glass wall shown clear on one side and private on the other

One room, one day

A conference room in a research institution is not booked for one kind of meeting. It takes a collaborative workshop in the morning, an executive briefing after lunch, and a confidential presentation the same evening. A room with fixed privacy has to be chosen for one of those and refused to the other two — which is how institutions end up with an open room nobody can speak freely in and a closed room nobody wants to sit in.

Switchable partitions take that decision out of the booking. The room is open until somebody needs it not to be, and the glass answers in the second it is asked.

The project

Location — Bethesda, Maryland, on the NIH campus
Spaces — conference rooms, meeting rooms and presentation areas
Product — PriWatt ultra-clear self-adhesive smart film (PDLC)
Type — retrofit onto the existing glass partitions
Coordination — New Age Development Group
Installation — Smart Glass Technologies, authorised distributor

What changed for the people using the rooms

Privacy arrives at the switch, in the second it is needed
A room books for anything, instead of being the private one or the open one
No blinds, shades or curtains — nothing in the sightline and nothing to dust
Daylight stays in the room in either state
The film accepts automation and building control alongside a wall switch

National Library of Medicine entrance, a PriWatt smart glass project

The outcome is an ordinary one to describe and a hard one to buy any other way: the glass that was already in the building now supports whatever the institution schedules into the room, and it did not cost a glazing programme to get there.