Engineered Transparency: Glass in Architecture and Structural Engineering

Accentuating the effects of space, light and structure, glass has become an architectural staple that encourages transparency and visibility throughout a variety of landscapes. After its role in the last century's call to a radical new architecture and urban life, glass architecture is today more ubiquitous than ever. Touching on the social and cultural aspects of its popularization, architect Elizabeth Diller states, "It's not so much about looking out, feeling the mastery of outside, it's much more about revealing ourselves to the outside in a very willful way." (Elizabeth Diller). Its latest incarnation reveals a virtually new product that is replacing the glass used even twenty years ago, offering new modes of visual depth and spatial experience to building occupants. Glass has also been the beneficiary of major advances in engineering that are decidedly less visible such as structural innovations, thermal properties, and expanded fabrication limits. Filmed at an international conference of prominent architects and engineers at Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture in September 2007, "Engineered Transparency" explores the timeline of glass as a material and its consistent significance within the architectural community.