Glossary · C
Curtain wall
A non-load-bearing outer wall, usually of glass and metal, hung from the edges of the floor slabs and carrying only its own weight and the wind.
See also: Mullion, Spandrel panel
Rules that use the word
The curtain wall. Hang the outer wall from the edges of the floor slabs as a continuous skin of glass and metal, independent of the frame behind it, and express its grid of mullions.
The bastioned trace. Give a fortified town a polygonal wall with an angled bastion at every corner, so that each face of every bastion and every stretch of curtain wall can be swept by fire from its neighbours.
Where it appears in the book
In the chapters Frame and Skin, The Modern Movement, The Contemporary.
A feature of Modernism architecture.
Nearby in the glossary
Crossing · Crown post · Cruck · Cupola · Curvilinear tracery · Cushion capital · Cusp · Cyclopean masonry