A spectacular façade is an easy thing to build and a difficult thing to keep. This one has been doing both for twenty-five years, and the discipline of its maintenance is arguably more instructive than its geometry.
The decision that mattered
Access. Everything expensive about maintaining this envelope follows from the access design, and the access design was settled before the first panel was drawn. That is the entire lesson.
Cleaning discipline
Glass in a desert climate with an irrigated landscape above it collects deposit. The regime is not aggressive; it is consistent, documented, and tied to visible thresholds rather than to a calendar. It has not required a single unplanned intervention in the panel system.
What to copy
Specify the maintenance regime as part of the design package. Price it. And keep it funded through the handover period, because that is where it is usually lost.
