Sydney architect Ben Berwick’s Solgami window solution for energy efficiency could revolutionise old buildings

New York’s Seagram skyscraper is one of the most influential buildings ever built, a modernist masterpiece that has been copied endlessly since it opened in 1958. Which is a problem because its single-pane glass walls make it prohibitively expensive to heat and cool.

“It reflects a time when energy use was a good thing,” says Ben Berwick, a Sydney-based architect. In the 1950s, oil prices were low and Seagram’s architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed the building without regard to operating costs. As a skyscraper, it’s an example of influence and inefficiency.