About the Conference / Schedule / Bios / Organizations / Acknowledgements

After its role in the last century’s call to a radical new architecture and urban life, glass architecture is today more ubiquitous than ever. A highly engineered product, glass has emerged in a new light as an apparently culturally accepted material in design and construction. Its new incarnation, however, reveals a virtually new product replacing the glass used even twenty years ago. The innovations are observable and have direct use. Offering new modes of visual pleasure and spatial experience to building occupants—glass has also been the beneficiary of major advances in engineering that are decidedly less visible—structural innovations, new control and design engineering at the level of optics, thermal properties, and expanded fabrication limits as well as installation methods have quietly reconfigured the extent and reach of glass applications. We are so continually surrounded by such discretely functioning glass that we do not even see it. This interdisciplinary conference aims to bring an ordinarily extraordinary material back before our eyes.

— Michael Bell, Professor, Chair,
Columbia Conference on Architecture, Engineering and Materials

The list of participating architects, engineers, historians, and theorists includes:
Michelle Addington, Michael Bell, Roberto Bicchiarelli, Albrecht Burmeister, James Carpenter, Beatriz Colomina, Elizabeth Diller, Graham Dodd, Kenneth Frampton, Laurie Hawkinson, Robert Heintges, Gunter Henn, Steven Holl, Ulrich Knaack, Wilfried Laufs, Reinhold Martin, Detlef Mertins, Christian Meyer, Guy Nordenson, Scott Norville, Joan Ockman, Toshihiro Oki, Antoine Picon, Susanne Rexroth, Tom Richardson, François Roche, Stefan Röschert, Jens Schneider, Hans Schober, Matthias Schuler, Kazuyo Sejima, Robert Smilowitz, Werner Sobek, Richard Tomasetti, Bernard Tschumi, Bernhard Weller, Mark Wigley

Conference Keynote Lecture — Kazuyo Sejima, Architect, SANAA, Tokyo

Convened by
The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation,
Columbia University in the City of New York
Mark Wigley, Dean

In Collaboration with
The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science
Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Columbia University
Christian Meyer, Chair and Professor

Institute of Building Construction,
Technische Universität Dresden
Bernhard Weller, Director and Professor

Engineered Transparency has been generously underwritten by the exclusive sponsor

Oldcastle Glass
www.oldcastleglass.com

Exclusive media sponsor
The Architect’s Newspaper
www.archpaper.com

Download the Engineered Transparency Program