Transparent Architecture 2

Transparent Architecture 2 is an exploration of the nature of transparency in architecture, ranging from spatial and physical transparency, to a clarity of structure, to the dematerialization of the actual physical object, and further to evolving and expanding states of architectural awareness.

This exploration is revealed through a juxtaposition of experimental drawing, subliminal texts, and actual constructed work. The projects in this book are an expansion of the approaches in the original Transparent Architecture. These projects begin with earlier experimental drawing, then the seminal ideas come to fruition years later in actual constructed work. Even across time, a consistent architectural stance emerges and seems to permeate all the work. The etymology of the word transparent is interesting. It has its origins in Latin, transparere, meaning to show through. Whereas the original Latin derivation is trans + parere, meaning to show oneself, thus suggesting both looking out, and looking in.

The built projects are fully congruent in spirit with the earlier investigations for which construction is not an issue. The question is how the architect moves from what appears immaterial to the transformation of the ideas into something very concrete. That which appears to unite both aspects is transparency. The work in this new book points to an architecture that seems to suggest a multiplicity of qualities. Paradoxically, it is also architecture that reveals itself and its own singular nature clearly. Activities happen all at once, in a seamless whole, in a simultaneity of experience, where the normal boundaries and usual edges do not hold. The experimental drawings, texts, and built projects on the following pages are visual and spatial explorations. They aim toward architecture that provokes thought, refines one’s abilities to see, and embraces the ongoing confluence and mutability of things. The inhabitant then moves through and interacts, in a live and changing world.