Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Transparency: The Material History of an Idea

Transparency: The Material History of an Idea

Jutte, Daniel

Hardcover

PhilosophyReligion General General World History

ISBN10: 0300237243
ISBN13: 9780300237245
Publisher: Yale Univ Pr
Published: Apr 25 2023
Pages: 512
Weight: 3.10
Height: 1.42 Width: 7.17 Depth: 9.13
Language: English
A wide-ranging illustrated history of transparency as told through the evolution of the glass window

With impressive detail and wide-ranging erudition, Jütte charts the history of a single material, glass, as a product of human ingenuity developed across centuries.--James Gleick, New York Review of Books

Transparency is a mantra of our day. It is key to the Western understanding of a liberal society. We expect transparency from, for instance, political institutions, corporations, and the media. But how did it become such a powerful--and global--idea?

From ancient glass to Apple's corporate headquarters, this book is the first to probe how Western people have experienced, conceptualized, and evaluated transparency. Daniel Jütte argues that the experience of transparency has been inextricably linked to one element of Western architecture: the glass window.

Windows are meant to be unnoticed. Yet a historical perspective reveals the role that glass has played in shaping how we see and interpret the world. A seemingly pure material, glass has been endowed, throughout history, with political, social, and cultural meaning, in manifold and sometimes conflicting ways. At the same time, Jütte raises questions about the future of vitreous transparency--its costs in terms of visual privacy but also its ecological price tag in an age of accelerating climate change.

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