Engineered Transparency: The Technical, Visual, and Spatial Effects of Glass

"Engineered Transparency" presents a portfolio of projects featuring cutting-edge glass designs by today’s most innovative architects, including SANAA’s acclaimed Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art, Yoshio Taniguchi’s MoMA expansion in New York City, and Steven Holl’s Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, with contributions by foremost thinkers in the field of architecture and design, including: historians Kenneth Frampton, Antoine Picon, and Detlef Mertins; cultural critics Beatriz Colomina, Joan Ockman, and Reinhold Martin; engineers Werner Sobek, Guy Nordenson, and Richard Tomasetti; and architects Kazuyo Seijima, Steven Holl, and Elizabeth Diller, Engineered Transparency redefines glass as a twenty-first-century building material and challenges our assumptions about its aesthetic, structural, and spatial potential.

Michael Bell is a Professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where he is Director of the Core Design Studios. He is the founder of Michael Bell Architecture, based in New York City.

Jeannie Kim is the Publications Editor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she also teaches.