Transparency

A wide-ranging illustrated history of transparency as told through the evolution of the glass window With impressive detail and wide-ranging erudition, Jtte charts the history of a single material, glass, as a product of human ingenuity developed across centuries.James Gleick, New York Review of Books Transparency is a mantra of our day. It is key to the Western understanding of a liberal society. We expect transparency from, for instance, political institutions, corporations, and the media. But how did it become such a powerfuland globalidea? From ancient glass to Apples corporate headquarters, this book is the first to probe how Western people have experienced, conceptualized, and evaluated transparency. Daniel Jtte argues that the experience of transparency has been inextricably linked to one element of Western architecture: the glass window. Windows are meant to be unnoticed. Yet a historical perspective reveals the role that glass has played in shaping how we see and interpret the world. A seemingly pure material, glass has been endowed, throughout history, with political, social, and cultural meaning, in manifold and sometimes conflicting ways. At the same time, Jtte raises questions about the future of vitreous transparencyits costs in terms of visual privacy but also its ecological price tag in an age of accelerating climate change.