Engineered Transparency :
The Technical, Visual, and Spatial Effects of Glass
Michael Bell , Jeannie Kim

Glass is one of the most ubiquitous and extensively researched building materials. Despite the critical role it has played in modern architecture in the last century, we have yet to fully comprehend the cultural and technological effects of this complex and sophisticated building material. Engineered Transparency brings together an extraordinary, multi-disciplinary group of international architects, engineers, manufacturers, and critics to collectively reconsider glass within the context of recent engineering and structural achievements. In light of these advancements, glass has reemerged as a novel architectural material, offering new and previously unimaginable modes of visual pleasure and spatial experience.

Engineered Transparency presents a portfolio of projects featuring cutting-edge glass designs by today's most innovative architects, including SANAA's acclaimed Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art, Yoshio Taniguchi's MoMA expansion in New York City, and Steven Holl's Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. With contributions by foremost thinkers in the field of architecture and design including historians Kenneth Frampton, Antoine Picon, and Detlef Mertins; cultural critics Beatriz Colomina, Joan Ockman, and Reinhold Martin; engineers Werner Sobek, Guy Nordenson, and Richard Tomasetti; architects Kazuyo Sejima, Steven Holl, and Elizabeth Diller; Engineered Transparency redefines glass as a 21st century building material and challenges our assumptions about its aesthetic, structural, and spatial potential.


Michael Bell is a Professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where he is Director of the Core Design Studios. He is the founder of Michael Bell Architecture, based in New York City.

Jeannie Kim is the Publications Editor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she also teaches.

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Editorial Reviews

California Bookwatch:

"Any college-level arts library strong in architecture needs this." — Diane C. Donovan,(March, 2009)

The New Science Of Glass,

Christian Science Monitor :

"Eighty-one years ago, architect Frank Lloyd Wright marveled at an old material that he helped give new meaning.What is this magic material, there but not seen if you are looking through it? he asked in an essay. Mr. Wright responded to that question one that has fascinated architects and engineers before and after his work by calling glass a supermaterial and frequently incorporating it into his designs. With prescience, Wright believed that future buildings would be constructed where Walls themselves because of glass will become windows and windows as we know them as holes in walls will be seen no more. Would Wright be surprised to see how his vision of glass architecture has come true in 2009?" — Norman Weinstein,(July 13, 2009)

Shattering Classes,

The Architects Newspaper:

"Equal parts architecture and engineering, theory and practce, eye candy and data...Engineering Transparency provides a decent theoretical and technical background for a contemporary understanding of glass, one that leaves few areas unexplored, if only preliminarily so." — John Hill,(July 29, 2009)

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