Formally, transparency usually takes the shape of a window, a door, a curtain wall, or a skylight. These are commonly created through rectangular punched openings or in the form of glass curtain wall systems or translucent screens. The following projects play with traditional notions of transparency and window-making in playful and unconventional ways. They create visually striking facades and dynamic relationships between their exterior and interior. They filter light and frame views through their glazing and opening articulation to craft memorable architectural experiences.
In a Public Market - Glass Farm / MVRDV
Wrapped in glass and with a pitched roof, this market square designed by MVRDV features an augmented, superimposed collaged image of a farm structure. Built in 2013 and located in Schijndel in the Netherlands, it contains public amenities such as restaurants, shops, and a wellness center. The projected image was printed using a fritted procedure as an homage to the traditional Schijjndel farm and collaged by artist Frank Van der Salm.
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Seeing Through Layers: Translucent Materials in ArchitectureThe result is an effect similar to that of a stained glass window in a cathedral, with a print that is more or less translucent depending on its location. The image is intentionally designed out of scale and is 1.6 times larger than a real farm. While the superimposed image of vernacular architecture feels familiar, the building feels odd in scale, material texture, and opacity, making this structure and its formal subtlety stunningly strange. While the scale of the image causes people to feel scalar disorientation, bits and pieces of the opacity are eaten away in spots, fading at the edges. The translucent glass facade allows people to look through its envelope differently at different locations, creating layered moments depending on where the structure is approached.
On an Apartment Building - DL1310 Building / Young & Ayata, Michan Architecture
Located in Mexico City and with a fairly straightforward layout, this apartment building's facade design pivots around creating openings in a physically constrained lot. The project features 1-2 bedroom apartments constructed using a cast-in-place concrete system. Architects Young & Ayata and Michan Architecture focused their efforts on the building's openings, maximizing the site's footprint and using its maximum allowed height. Since the side elevations were near the side lot lines, standard windows were undesirable due to the possibility of further construction on adjacent lots. For that reason, windows rotate towards the street. As the windows pull in their rotation, their top and bottom surfaces curve to make it possible, creating a composition of twenty-two twisting rectangular windows of different sizes.
The effect is a sculpturally undulating facade and interiors with unique views. As the facade's surfaces curve, they create a play of light and shadow on their relieved faces. These form a sculpted mosaic, with familiarly shaped rectangular windows bending and turning like gesturing eyes. These formal moves also make a variety of views and layered moments from the interior, with windows looking both outward and inward simultaneously, creating different views for each unit.
On a Retail Storefront - The Looking Glass Facade Renovation / UNStudio
Inspired by the flow of transparent cloth, the glazing on this storefront was designed using curved glass panels. Located in the Netherlands, UNStudio remodeled this facade on the P.C Hooftstraat, a well-known high-end shopping street in Amsterdam. The grided, three-window vertical division is kept, while the bottom two rows of windows join and stretch to create large swaths of glass, revealing to pedestrians the boutique store inside. Each opening is comprised of curved glass panels mimicking billowing fabrics. Each forms a glass box, which was pre-assembled and mounted on site. The result is an elegant blend of familiar traditional townhouse architecture with a contemporary twist on its retail storefront.
On a House - Chuzhi House / Wallmakers
While the glass is not the protagonist in this house, it plays a crucial role in filling the in-between spaces of a spiraling and snaking structure. Located in Shoolagiri, India, it is a house that tucks itself away against the landscape. The building's concrete structure snakes around trees, making sense of a rocky topography by creating a subterranean home. Multiple whirls of concrete curl around a tree and connect to build the house below. In between these swirls, tessellated glass connects one swirl to the other, enclosing the space and allowing light to seep through into the space. The transparencies in this space blur the lines between the interior and exterior and create the feeling of living inside a canyon-like rock structure amidst trees. The complexly shaped glass geometries allow visual access to the tree canopies above, framed through the curving concrete beams.
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