Shadow of Clear Glass: Wyn Geleynse and Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle
In his Natural History (77 CE), Pliny the Elder, admiring the many varieties of coloured glass, notes that “the highest value is set upon glass that is entirely colourless and transparent, as nearly as possible resembling crystal, in fact.”1 Almost two millennia have passed, and a longing for transparent glass remains, becoming highly conceptualized: “[W]e imagine glass to be purely transparent,” writes curtain wall expert Robert Heintges, “we will it to be transparent; we imbue it with an imagined essence of transparency, even when this is not the physical or visual reality.”2
In modern architecture, which has played a part in fostering imagined transparency, clear glass is not always desirable. Paul Scheerbart envisages the state and future of building with “coloured glass” which he asserts “endures” more than bricks, “destroys hatred” and illuminates happiness.3 Clear glass can also be “irritating,” as Le Corbusier puts it, because its ability to fulfill “the pleasure in seeing the play of the sky, trees, or general views outside” conflicts with the “desire to be secluded from the outside and especially to have some privacy.”4 Chicago nephrologist Edith Farnsworth, a notable victim of this pellucid irritant, describes living in her glass house designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as being like “a prowling animal” or “a sentinel on guard day and night.”5 Moreover, she adds:
I don’t keep a garbage can under my sink. . . . Because you can see the whole “kitchen” from the road on the
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