Welcome to the Glass Age

100 Cathedral , the skyscraper was understood as a modern spiritual equivalent to the historical cathedral [6]. In the Americas, Frank Lloyd Wright explored the possibilities of both stained-glass and transparent glass panes, as a medium that could overcome classicism and achieve a true representation of the modern ways of the United States [7]. The Larkin Building, famous for its glass skylights over the atrium, was deeply connected to a religious sense of work with its salomonic floor plan, carved inscription and a pipe organ. The later Johnson Wax Building had a more industrial and practical application of Pyrex glass, still the architect had planned the installation of a pipe organ to the main office. On the other hand, Albert Khan was applying glass skylights and glass curtain walls to all his designs of Ford Plants to improve working conditions and reduce operation costs. 20 th century industrial plants were almost a new form of architecture in themselves, one that demanded new technologies and material applications. If there was the applications and social benefits. Glass was not only the material to build a new transparent society after the Great War, as Beatriz Colomina’s X-Ray Architecture [8] attest, glass was a material correlated to new sanitary measures against tuberculosis and other diseases. Sanatoriums were also a modern form where glass flourished, Alvar Aalto’s Paimio Sanatorium being one of the exemplary cases of the relation of modern architecture, health and glass; skyscraper, there were also the industrial plant inserted on the debate of the modern cathedral, it is not casually that Peter Brehens’ AEG Factory was nicknamed “cathedral of work”. Still, it was transparent glass over its colorful counterpart that became the general norm to modern architecture. As Scheerbart and Taut were both debating over the spiritual sense of modernity, Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius were focusing on the technical Figure 6.5. Bruno Taut’s Glass Pavilion for the 1914 Werkbund. Source: Wikimedia Commons.