Glass State: The Technology of the Spectacle, Paris, 1981--1998

From the Gothic to the contemporary, glass has transformed thestructural, formal, and philosophical principles of architecture. In The GlassState, Annette Fierro views the many meanings of transparency in architecture.Specifically, she analyzes the transparent monumental buildings that were built inParis between 1981 and 1998 as part of Francois Mitterrand's program of GrandsProjets. The Grands Projets provide a rare opportunity to study a finite set ofbuildings constructed of similar materials, in the same time period, in a specificurban landscape, and with related ideological missions.Fierro employs a 'discourseof the detail,' in which the smallest architectural detail manifests the political, theoretical, and urban contexts of the building's design and construction. Sheexamines the paradox of the most pared down architectural configurations being usedto support the most complex meanings. Intrinsic to Mitterrand's glass buildings inParis, for example, is a political concept: the metaphor of accessibility as a meansof breaking open cultural institutions previously closed to the public.In additionto the structures of the Grands Projets -- the Institut du Monde Arabe, the Grandeand Petite Pyramides du Louvre, the glass greenhouses at utopian park projects at LaVillette and Andre Citro?n and the Bibliotheque nationale de France -- Fierrodiscusses the Fondation Cartier and two precedent structures, the Centre GeorgesPompidou and the Eiffel Tower. A study of the technological, theoretical, and cultural significance of the transparency of the glass structures of Francois Mitterrand's Grands Projets in Paris.…