Blurred Transparencies In Contemporary Glass Architecture

Blurred Transparencies in Contemporary Glass Architecture brings to light complex readings of transparent glass through close observations of six pivotal works of architecture. Written from the perspectives of a practitioner, the six essays challenge assumptions about fragility and visual transparency of glass. A material imbued with idealism and utopic vision, glass has captured architects’ imagination, and glass’s fragility and difficulties in thermal control continue to present technical challenges. In recent decades, architecture has witnessed an emergence of technological advancements in chemical coating, structural engineering, and fabrication methods that resulted in new kinds of glass transparencies. Buildings examined in the book include a sanatorium with expansive windows delivering light and air to recovering tuberculosis patients, a pavilion with a crystal clear glass plenum circulating air for heating and cooling, a glass monument symbolizing the screen of personal devices that shortened the distance between machines and humans, and a glass building symbolizing the social and material intertwining in the glass ceiling metaphor. Connecting material glass to broader cultural and social contexts, Blurred Transparencies in Contemporary Glass Architecture enlightens students and practitioners of architecture as well as the general public with interest in design. The author demonstrates how glass is rarely crystal clear but is blurred both materially and metaphysically, revealing complex readings of ideas for which glass continues to stand.

Glass stands for openness and transparency. In contemporary glass architecture these associations are utilized in a subtle and highly intentional way. Some buildings appear low-key and reduced to express elegance and seriousness, other provide deep insights to set a stage for profiling and a vivid exchange between inside and outside. In either case innovative glass buildings generate unexpected perspectives, individual communication channels and a temporary feeling of freedom in an actually closed spatiality. In this title about 60 projects from all around the world will be presented with texts, photos as well as sketches and drawings.

In The Pandemic Effect, 90 leading architects, designers, materials scientists, and health officials reflect on the influence of COVID-19 on buildings and cities—and propose solutions to safeguard the built environment from future pandemics, viruses, and contagious diseases on every scale, from surfaces to society. Safety and sustainability in buildings and cities have taken on new meaning during the COVID -19 pandemic. Buildings became magnifiers of contagion instead of shelters for protection. In this essential resource for both practitioners and students of architecture, interior design, and urban design, 90 of the world's leading experts investigate a variety of approaches to future-proof architecture and buildings against widespread disease. These inoculation strategies are organized into five chapters: "Histories" offers an overview of past pandemics and prior architectural approaches; "Inside / Outside" addresses the roles of building envelopes and mechanical systems in improving indoor environmental quality; "Interventions" consists of contemporary methods for direct prevention and control; "New Strategies" consists of various architectural analyses and proposals for design changes; and "The Public Realm" considers the urban landscape and related social questions. This broad collection of perspectives explores the transformations underway in the built environment—and offers design strategies to limit the severity of subsequent pandemics.

Following the success of the earlier titles in this series, Detail in Contemporary Glass Architecture provides analysis of both the technical and the aesthetic importance of details in modern glass architecture. Featuring the work of renowned architects from around the world, this book presents 50 of the most recently completed and influential glass designs for residential, public and commercial architecture. Each project is presented with colour photographs, site plans and sections and elevations, as well as numerous construction details. There is also a descriptive text, detailed captions and in-depth information for each project, including the location, client, architectural project team, main consultants and contractors. The projects are presented in clear and concise layouts over four pages. All of the drawings are styled in the same consistent way and presented at standard architectural scales to allow for easy comparison. There is also a CD-ROM which contains all the drawings as printed in the book, in both EPS and DWG (generic CAD) formats. In addition the book features an index of architects that includes the name, address and all contact details for each architect. Detail in Contemporary Glass Architecture is an excellent reference work for practising architects as well as architecture and design students.

Much of modern architecture has been conceived using glass to create minimal structures. This book begins with an introduction that traces the history of glass in architecture and also describes the developments in glass technology. It also features specially commissioned photographs by the renowned architectural photographer, Dennis Gilbert.

Treacherous Transparencies analyzes transparency as expressed in architecture and art in an attempt to understand the intentions and objectives that underlie its use by pertinent architects and artists. The publication looks at a few important works by selected artists and architects who work with transparency as an artistic strategy, which they implement primarily by using glass and mirrors but other media as well. e architects and artists listed together in this context form an unlikely alliance: Bruno Taut, Ivan Leonidov, Marcel Duchamp, Mies van der Rohe, Dan Graham, and Gerhard Richter. But they do have something in common: their work marks salient way stations in the story of modernism up to the present day. Concept & text by Jacques Herzog and photographs of Farnsworth House by Pierre de Meuron.

Today the excitement in architecture derives from the tension between the need for privacy and the impulse toward community. This unique survey of buildings and interiors captures the multilayered experience that is engaged whenever we look out of—or into—a work of architecture. Immaterial Worldexamines the built environment as a reflection of the terrors and pleasures of exposure, information overload, and abundance of every sort. Twenty-five projects from around the world by such well-known architects as Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Morphosis, Christian de Portzamparc, Renzo Piano, and many others, are presented. These works range from complete transparency to bunkerlike opacity, depending upon who’s doing the looking and who or what is being seen.

An overview of the art and science of glass in architecture. This work provides a comprehensive overview of the art and science of glass use, demonstrating its historical importance in paving the way for a closer synergy between the designer and technologist. In addition to providing a historical context for glass architecture, the central section of the book presents 20 international detailed case studies of contemporary glass buildings showing the range of applications in a variety of situations, large and small. The book also explores the potential for the future, as new materials move from the abstract world of technical research into realization; a detailed appendix provides a full review of the science of glass, with a section on design and performance.