Clearly Glass?
- Arch. Sharon Golan
- 30 ביולי
- זמן קריאה 2 דקות
Reflections on Glass in Architectural Preservation at the Liebling Haus
Until recently, I regarded glass as a kind of “non-material”—transparent, elusive, almost immaterial. It existed in the threshold between inside and out, mediating rather than asserting itself. It was a neutral membrane, a presence so understated it hardly seemed to warrant attention.
The renovation of the Liebling Haus, necessitated by the blast wave from a nearby missile strike, altered that perception entirely. Glass now demands a different discourse—both because it has become one of the most in-demand materials in the wake of widespread wartime damage, and because of its singular material nature.
Glass is amorphous: a solid without the ordered, crystalline structure typical of metals or minerals. In essence, it is a liquid arrested mid-flow, rapidly cooled before crystallization could occur.
Its history, too, is rooted in our region. As early as the third millennium BCE, glass was in use in ancient Egypt, where artisans developed techniques for crafting vividly colored beads. Later, discoveries in Jerusalem from the Hellenistic and Roman periods reveal the adoption of glassblowing—an innovation that transformed its production and use.
At the Liebling Haus, as in many buildings constructed before the 1950s—prior to the invention of the Float Glass process—glass was produced through manual or semi-industrial means. Its surfaces bear the marks of their making: faint distortions, tiny air bubbles, and uneven thicknesses. These irregularities imbued the glass with a material vitality, situating it firmly in the era of its production.
The mid-20th century brought the Float Glass revolution. By allowing molten glass to “float” over a bath of molten tin, then cooling it in a carefully controlled annealing process, manufacturers produced perfectly flat, uniform sheets at industrial scale. While this technological advance standardized glazing worldwide, it also effaced the expressive irregularities of earlier glass. It became increasingly invisible—reduced to a seamless, neutral
skin.
When the stairwell glazing at the Liebling Haus was shattered in the blast, it revealed another layer of material history. It was wired glass—once common in public buildings—its galvanized steel mesh embedded within, gently distorting light and interrupting transparency with its irregular grid. Intended as a primitive safety measure to hold shards in place, it stands in marked contrast to today’s laminated or tempered safety glass, which achieves strength and fracture control through entirely different means.
Imperfection as an Archive
The historic glazing of the Liebling Haus, with its softened transparencies and handmade inconsistencies, is more than mere material—it is an archive of architectural time. Its subtle imperfections testify to another era of building practice, embedding memory in matter.
Glass also occupies a central place in contemporary conversations on sustainability. It is infinitely recyclable without degradation of quality or performance, and its remelting demands significantly less energy than virgin production. As preservationists confront both the environmental imperatives of our time and the embodied memory of historic materials, glass emerges as a medium uniquely poised to bridge past and future: endlessly reworkable, yet always marked by the moment of its making.
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