Glass is unique amongst building materials as being both transparent and brittle. Unlike the other common brittle materials, concrete and masonry, cracking of any kind is regarded as a failure. Due to the technology initially available, breakage and fall out were considered to be a necessary risk for the transparency glass offered. The same assumption of sudden failure also precluded glass from structural applications. As technology has advanced, so has the potential for robustness through redundancy and retention. Specialist designers have successfully constructed many glass structures. However, many poor practices are perpetuated because of the lack of code mandated standards. To make glass as a structural material available to the wider design community, and as a reference to the building authorities that review and monitor them, a new structural glass standard is required. While many of the technical considerations will be common to the other material standards, the nature of glass and its design has many unique aspects that also require philosophical consideration. This paper makes proposals for the consideration of circumstance and consequence to add to the usual criteria of strength, stability and serviceability to develop a design standard that promotes good design of structural glass.
