Welcome to the Glass Age

99 time. Benjamin also argues that the 19 th century glass architecture was correlated to velocity and temporary structures [3], since it was used mostly on railroad stations and exhibitions palaces 3 , while the 20 th century glass architecture was seen as stable and solid due a change of social perception of time. As new materials and structural principles were discovered and pioneered in the 19 th century such as the glass curtain wall and reinforced concrete, mostly developed due the zealous work of engineers and pioneer architects, a search for a transcendental meaning for glass architecture pertains to art and architecture debates of the 20 th century. Literature led the way before architecture, German author Paul Scheerbart was one of the first to attribute to glass a new spiritual sense and utopic possibility both in a manifesto and novels. Also the French authors André Breton and Louis Aragon 3. Other famous palaces of glass and iron besides the English Crystal Palace were the French Galerie des Machines and Grand Palais. would explore the glass at the arcades in surrealist novels. Scheerbart would be of great impact to Bruno Taut’s early works and publications on modern architecture, Taut’s book Alpine Architecture [4] and the construction of the Glass Pavilion for the 1914 Werkbund (Figure 6.5) were among the first works to present colorful glass as a medium of modern spirituality, architecture and industry. On the other hand, Breton and Aragon would be the bases of Benjamin’s critics of bourgeois privacity and defense for a transparent glass architecture of the proletariat, one that could not bear traces of ownership. Another major debate was in the meaning of the American skyscraper and how to translate the typology to Europe. While the USSR saw the skyscraper as a symbol of American capitalism, even with important unrealized projects such as El Lissitzky’s Cloud Iron, the German architects were among the first to correlate the stained-glass cathedral to the glass skyscraper. Be it on Bruno Taut’s Stadkroner [5], or on Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus Manifesto cover illustrated with Lyonel Feninger’s Figure 6.4. Bureau of Standards making extensive tests of glass building blocks (Washington DC). Source: Library of Congress.