Faulty glass is to blame for the ongoing construction in the Doudna Fine Arts Center for more than a year now, the university architect said.

Rex Hilligoss, the university architect, said he was there from the start to the finish of the building.

Doudna, which was built over the course of seven years because the government froze spending on it, was a complicated one to construct, Hilligoss said.

“A year ago, we had some glass failure on the theater wall,” he said. “Through a series of investigations and reports, we’re trying to figure out how to best solve the problem.”

Hilligoss said the Facilities, Planning and Management Office is currently looking at options to permanently fix the glass, but have not come up with any good solutions just yet.

“The construction that went on in the theater was protection to the general public, that, should another piece of glass fail, they would be protected against that,” he said.

Hilligoss described how the glass on that particular section of the theater wall is tempered glass and can sometimes have a defect.

“There’s a small particle (in the glass) that expands and causes the glass to spontaneously break,” Hilligoss said.

Dave Crockett, the associate director of maintenance and operations, said the defect is a part of the manufacturing process.

“It’s not in all of the glass, but it’s something that does occasionally occur,” Crockett said.

Hilligoss said there is a way to remove almost all of the impurities in the tempered-glass manufacturing process, but some defects do occur, like it did in Doudna.

“We’ve had four pieces in that space fail,” Hilligoss said. 

Crockett explained that tempered glass breaks in a way that is safer to people because it breaks into chunks instead of shards.

 “On the other hand, when you have glass that’s mounted up 80 feet in the air, that’s a lot of glass that will crash to the floor,” Crockett said.

Crockett said the space where the glass failed is known as the glass canyon and consists of white frosty glass and black glass.

The closing of this area causes people trying to get from the main concourse to the theater to walk outside and go around.

Hilligoss said the area has been kept closed and under construction to protect the general public, should another piece of glass fall.

“We haven’t had (a piece of glass) break in over a year, but it’s just precautionary,” Hilligoss said.

Crockett said they are looking into different options to both protect people in the building as well as maintain the original glass that the architects favored.

“What we’re looking at doing is putting a type of film on that glass on both sides so if one would break, it wouldn’t come down,” Crockett said. 

Crockett said he and Hilligoss are planning meetings with providers of the film to see what options and pricing will work best for the structure.

Hilligoss said he hopes to have everything set up so the film could be installed in Summer 2013 when there are no students and the building can be opened.

“We’re trying to get some final answers so we know how to proceed,” Hilligoss said.

Robyn Dexter can be reached at 581-2812 or redexter@eiu.edu.