In architecture it is not so much the amount of light that enters a building that matters, as the way it enters, the quality of the light. Yet a film that would render the facade opaque from outside, would immediately obliterate the three-dimensional effect of the transparency. The least elegant solution would be to plaster the windows with stickers of birds of prey. Every day dozens of birds crash into this glass wall – chickadees and sparrows, emerald hummingbirds, warblers and cedar waxwings. The reflective south elevation of the administration building of the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, reflects the surroundings and the sky so perfectly that the facade itself ‘dissolves’. Architecture to snare a quarry? Architecture as a trap, or as a seductive image? Unintentional examples of the first are not unknown. The spider’s web is made from transparent spider’s silk which is woven in a very open structure so as to be as invisible as possible to the unsuspecting fly that the spider has set its sights on. But predators, too, can turn transparency to their advantage. In order to survive, the jellyfish needs a high degree of invisibility or non-materialization. Some organisms use transparency as a form of protection, like the jellyfish which makes itself almost invisible in order to escape the notice of predators. Just as this plant needs its ‘windows’ in order to live, human beings need the windows in buildings for we, too, require daylight for a healthy life. But in order to admit the daylight it needs for photosynthesis, the top of each ‘leaf’ consists of a thin, transparent material that ensures that the plant is able to absorb enough light. For example, the window plant (Fenestraria) is a succulent that lives in the desert where, to avoid drying out, it spends ninety per cent of its time hidden in the sand. Translucent structures and materials also occur in nature and when they do, there is always a functional reason. Where does that fascination come from, what is it with architects and transparency? Is it a longing for the ephemeral and immaterial, or is it simply that transparency satisfies a basic human need for light? And the number and variety of materials that can be used to manipulate light penetration is growing by the day, as are the ways in which they achieve this – through structure, texture, volume, colour, relief, prisms, openness, an illusion of depth and reflection. ![]() It turns out that architects and designers most often select ‘transparency’ when searching for a material. At visitors can search for materials on a variety of characteristics, such as gloss, texture, hardness, temperature, acoustics, smell and transparency. They can be dense materials like glass or have an open structure, like wire mesh or a woven fabric. ![]() It’s a beautiful word and yet seldom used by architects and designers for materials that allow light to pass through them, either transparent (crystal-clear), or translucent (‘misty’, diffuse and ‘vague’). ![]() It is related to ‘phantom’, something apparently sensed but having no physical reality. Materials that are light-permeable are usually called ‘transparent’ or translucent’, although it might be more accurate to call them ‘diaphanous’ – of such fine texture as to allow light to pass through translucent or transparent (from dia-, ‘through’+ phainen,‘to show, to appear’).
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