
Somewhere between 1914 and 1915, Le Corbusier designed the Maison Dom-Ino, a groundbreaking modular structure that replaced the heavy load-bearing walls with reinforced concrete columns and slabs. The open floor plan with minimal thin elements, coupled with large glass facades, would ensure healthy natural daylight for the interior spaces as well as desirable architectural transparency that could blur the boundaries between interior and exterior —at least metaphorically.
After more than a century since Le Corbusier shared his ideas for Dom-Ino, contemporary architecture, in the wake of a lingering modern era, continues to invest in using glass as a solution for walls and facades. Naturally, the meaning of this material has changed a little over time. Transparency was originally used to reveal the structure, making it more comprehensible, but it has become increasingly associated with ideological values and has been used in government buildings because it evokes an idealistic openness that transcends the material world and embraces symbolism. In his book The Art-Architecture Complex, critic and historian Hal Foster comments on an example of this: the renovation of the German Parliament in Berlin, the Reichstag, carried out by Foster + Partners. This project, as well as many others by the same office, and several other firms, aims at an analogy between architectural and political openness, with glass reflecting the transparency and accessibility of democracy.
