The earliest openings were just that, but mankind found ways to screen the outside with plant materials and animal hides. The discovery of glass (over 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, but probably first used by the Romans as a building material in 300 BCE) allowed visual connection with the outside without any of the noise, dust, and thermal discomforts from the raw climate. Window glass remained uncommon until the 1600’s, and only important rooms had glazed openings – other openings had shutters. In 1696 the English placed a tax on windows, ensuring that common people avoided putting windows into unimportant spaces… including bedrooms, servant’s rooms, privies, and anywhere that didn’t require daylight. The tax didn’t end until 1851, when construction of the Crystal Palace demanded the resources of the nation’s glassmakers for a building made entirely of windows.
Glass can make entire walls disappear; the boundary becomes potential and not permanent. This was the intent of Joseph Paxton in 1851 when he designed the Crystal Palace for “The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations.” Celebrating industrial practice and culture, the exposition structure embodied the most advanced technology of its time – an enclosure of 990,000 square feet, 1,851 feet long by 128 feet high, constructed with a frame of cast iron columns and trusses supporting 293,655 individual panes of glass. It was a marvel of engineering. Bill Bryson writes, “Today we are used to encountering glass in volume, but to someone living in 1851 the idea of strolling through cubic acres of airy light inside a building was dazzling…. It would have appeared as delicate and evanescent, as miraculously improbable, as a soap bubble.”
With new technologies, windows have realized greater strength than their nineteenth century predecessors. Windows stiffened with stainless steel splines, laminated with multiple layers of glass and interlayers of Lexan, can resist bullets and blasts, hurricane winds and debris impacts. These armoured plates are no longer the weakest link in the wall, but the one thing they cannot do is… open. Therefore, these may be the riskiest windows of all, demanding mechanical ventilation 100% of the time and eliminating all possibility of egress in an unthinkable scenario.
Technology provides defenses against other enemies – ultraviolet rays, solar heat gain, and glare. Glass coatings defy climatic foes, improve energy efficiency, and allow windows to expand to previously unrealized sizes. (The largest single window in the world was made for the Dubai Aquarium, measuring 21 feet wide by 18 feet high, comprised of 15 inch-thick acrylic polymer.)
Walls are made to divide, while openings join together. Without openings we are blind, disconnected from weather, daylight, fresh air, street life, and human congress. Without openings, we would rely on the artificial environment 100% of the time, to heat and cool, dry and humidify, light and color and exhaust our rooms. Studies show that children perform better in daylighted classrooms, with increased productivity, better retention, and improved morale. The only rooms without windows should be uninhabited spaces, for machines and not people.
Technology provides defenses against other enemies – ultraviolet rays, solar heat gain, and glare. Glass coatings defy climatic foes, improve energy efficiency, and allow windows to expand to previously unrealized sizes. (The largest single window in the world was made for the Dubai Aquarium, measuring 21 feet wide by 18 feet high, comprised of 15 inch-thick acrylic polymer.)
Walls are made to divide, while openings join together. Without openings we are blind, disconnected from weather, daylight, fresh air, street life, and human congress. Without openings, we would rely on the artificial environment 100% of the time, to heat and cool, dry and humidify, light and color and exhaust our rooms. Studies show that children perform better in daylighted classrooms, with increased productivity, better retention, and improved morale. The only rooms without windows should be uninhabited spaces, for machines and not people.
