The inherent strangeness of glass has been an undercurrent in architectural thinking at least since the days of Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915), the German speculative-fiction author who influenced (among other things) Bruno Taut's expressionist Glass Pavilion and Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project. Scheerbart believed that buildings made predominantly of glass could alter human perception and even usher in a utopian era.
Today's glass-forming technologies are expanding the sculptural and functional possibilities of this distinctive material. The built environment may never become as culturally transformative as Scheerbart hoped, but as hot and cold glass-bending methods continue to evolve, architects' material repertoire is expanding to invite and transform light in ways that even fin de siècle visionaries couldn't have imagined.
