Treacherous Transparencies Thoughts and Observations Triggered by a Visit to Farnsworth House

Treacherous Transparencies analyzes transparency as expressed in architecture and art in an attempt to understand the intentions and objectives that underlie its use by pertinent architects and artists.

The publication looks at a few important works by selected artists and architects who work with transparency as an artistic strategy, which they implement primarily by using glass and mirrors but other media as well. e architects and artists listed together in this context form an unlikely alliance: Bruno Taut, Ivan Leonidov, Marcel Duchamp, Mies van der Rohe, Dan Graham, and Gerhard Richter. But they do have something in common: their work marks salient way stations in the story of modernism up to the present day.

Concept & text by Jacques Herzog and photographs of Farnsworth House by Pierre de Meuron.

Jacques Herzog, born in Basel in 1950, studied architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) from 1970 to 1975 with Aldo Rossi and Dolf Schnebli. He was a visiting tutor at Cornell University in 1983, has been a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1989 and since 1994, is a professor at ETH Zurich since 1999, and co-founded the ETH Studio Basel – Contemporary City Institute in 2002.

Pierre de Meuron, born in Basel in 1950, studied architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) from 1970 to 1975 with Aldo Rossi and Dolf Schnebli. He has been a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1989 and since 1994, is a professor at ETH Zurich since 1999, and co-founded the ETH Studio Basel – Contemporary City Institute in 2002.