Transparency: The Material History of an Idea

Description

A wide-ranging illustrated history of transparency as told through the evolution of the glass window Transparency is a mantra of our day. It is key to the Western understanding of a liberal society. We expect transparency from, for instance, political institutions, corporations, and the media. But how did it become such a powerful—and global—idea? From ancient glass to Apple’s corporate headquarters, this book is the first to probe how Western people have experienced, conceptualized, and evaluated transparency. Daniel Jütte argues that the experience of transparency has been inextricably linked to one element of Western architecture: the glass window. Windows are meant to be unnoticed. Yet a historical perspective reveals the role that glass has played in shaping how we see and interpret the world. A seemingly “pure” material, glass has been endowed, throughout history, with political, social, and cultural meaning, in manifold and sometimes conflicting ways. At the same time, Jütte raises questions about the future of vitreous transparency—its costs in terms of visual privacy but also its ecological price tag in an age of accelerating climate change. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Introduction 1. Glass and Architecture in Ancient Times 2. Dark Ages?: Architectural Glass in Early Medieval Europe 3. Light from Light: The Theology of Stained Glass 4. "Closyd well with royall glas": Medieval Domestic Glass 5. "Glass windows made of fabric": A Forgotten Tradition 6. From the House of God to the Houses of Burghers 7. Glass and Class: Personalization and Prestige 8. From Sacred Material to Secular Commodity: The Reformation of Glass 9. The Rise of Cristallo 10. More Light: From the Baroque to the Enlightenment 11. Too Much Glass: The Genealogy of a Nineteenth-Century Concern 12. Palaces of Glass: Vitreous Visions in an Age of Public Glass 13. Modernity and the Struggle for Glass Architecture 14. Transparency between Totalitarianism and Democracy 15. Postwar Enthusiasm, Postmodernist Rejection—and the Present Epilogue Notes Bibliography Acknowledgments Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Credits