why not use retaining walls to resist orthogonal shear?

[Materofact]

dont know why this has never come up before, but say you have a daylight basement with a story above it. why not use the retaining walls to resist the shear (applied perpendicular to the walls) that would be normally taken by the daylight wall, therefore leaving it possible to be say, entirely glass. what issues arise? please discuss.

 

[Materofact]

diaphragm transfer for one i suppose, where the wall used to load path the roof loads to the wall below, now needs to tranfer concentrated at the wall line, or diapghragm throguth the floor "backwards".

 

[KootK]

It could be done. I expect that, unless your building is very long parallel to the open wall, the main floor as a three sided cantilevered diaphragm would be the stiffer load path however.

I like to debate structural engineering theory -- a lot. If I challenge you on something, know that I'm doing so because I respect your opinion enough to either change it or adopt it.

 

[Signious]

Could be done with some complex connection detail at the glass & side wall. I am thinking some sort of slotted connection that would allow the real basement walls to deflect without trying to dump load into the glass. They wouldn't really have to be a retaining wall as you still are supported from the diaphragm. May need shear walls stubs at the ends to take care of loads from above though.

Would be hard to make it meet energy code, but having the glass wall 'float' without a ridged connection to the diaphragm and perpendicular retaining walls is possible (in my imagination at least).