STRUCTURAL GLASS FACADES - USC School of Architecture

1.2.1 Glass as Material
“Glass is arguably the most remarkable material ever discovered by man,” states Michael
Wigginton (1996, p.6) in his great book Glass in Architecture. 2 An estimated 4,000 years
ago, probably at the site of an ancient pottery kiln in the eastern Mediterranean, some
curious soul stopped to wonder at the unusual properties of an inadvertent mix of sand and
ash that had been exposed to the kiln’s heat, and ignited a love affair between man and
material, glass in this instance, that has been going strong ever since. Amato (1997, p.31)
references the old story attributed to Pliny (1 st century AD), of the Phoenician sailors trading
in soda cooking on the beach one day and using blocks of soda (natron; an ash derived from
plant material) to support their cooking pots. The combination of sand, ash and heat
produced a primitive, translucent glass material. While one can never know the exact
circumstances of this imagining, one can assume the high probability of a discovery born of
some similar accident, and the earliest evidence of glass artifacts can be documented from
this time.
It was nearly another two thousand years before the technique of glass blowing was
discovered in the 1 st century BC on the Syro-Palestinian coast, laying the foundation for the
diffusion of glass technology throughout the Roman world. Wigginton (1996, p.12) observes
that by the time of the Roman Empire, the composition of glass had been refined to a mix
quite similar to the slightly green-tinted soda lime glass used today in the manufacture of flat
glass: 69% silica, 17% soda, 11% lime and magnesia, and 3% alumina, iron oxide and
manganese oxide. However, it was not until the turn of the 18 th and into the early 19 th
century that exacting recipes for the chemical mix were developed empirically by early
material scientists. Glass as material is explored more fully in Chapter 2.
2 This book is highly recommended to anyone interested in architectural glass or the use of
glass in architecture. The first chapter of this thesis draws heavily from Wigginton’s
comprehensive, insightful and inspiring writings.
13