Athens Tower 1 stands like the city’s glassy grandparent, completed in 1971, 28 floors high and 103 metres tall, still the tallest building in Athens and proud of it. Its façade is a classic late-modernist curtain wall: lots of clear glass set into anodized aluminium frames that gave the tower its clean, slightly brownish trim and unmistakable 1970s chic.
Back then the glass was almost certainly annealed soda-lime float glass (think: sturdy, uncoated, slightly green at the edges), typically 6–10 mm thick, single panes, no fancy low-E coatings or insulating doubles. Result: wonderful daylight, somewhat less wonderful energy bills. The frames were almost certainly extruded 6000-series aluminium (6063/6061 family), anodized for protection and style, the architectural equivalent of leather seats in an old car.
If the tower could talk it would brag about letting the sun in and sigh about thermal performance. Today, replacing those single panes with modern IGUs and low-E coatings would keep the daylight and politely kick the heating bill out the door. Athens Tower 1 remains a charming relic: a monument to an era that loved honesty in materials, glass, aluminium, and a confident refusal to hide its joints.
Source: Glass Balkan
