Glass in building and architecture

Over the four millennia of its history, glass has become, in its many applications, a fundamental and indispensable component of our everyday environment. With glass, we retrace the fascinating story of an intellectual and technical process that accompanies technological projects. In this way, building and architecture contribute to the development of a constantly evolving technical culture.

Since the 17th century, new products and processes have been constantly emerging. After the industrial revolution of the 19th century, new glass processing methods were introduced. Closer to home, we have seen that glass is a material that reacts to and resists stress, and so we exploit its structural qualities.

We've come a long way since the reign of Amenophis 1 ^er in the 2nd millennium BC!

According to Pliny the Elder, glass was discovered on a beach in Syria, in the province of Phoenicia near Judea. Tradition has it that nitre (soda ash) merchants wanted to cook their food, so they took blocks of nitre to use as tripods for their cauldrons. The nitre then melted under the heat of the fire and mixed with the beach sand to form glass beads.

Glass retains all its legend and mystery. Probably born of chance, it doesn't seem to have been invented by the Phoenicians. According to some sources, it appeared in Egypt at the beginning of the Pharaonic era (3,000 BC), but other accounts point to Mesopotamia.

One thing is certain, however: it wasn't until the reign of Amenophis 1 ^er (between 1558 and 1530 B.C.) that we saw the first glass object that could be accurately dated. Then, around the middle of the 13th century BC, the Egyptians began to make hollow glass by casting the glass around a pressed sand model, attached to the end of a neck-thick stick. They then decorated this first layer of strips with coloured glass. This core-coating technique was also used in Phoenicia.

Then, in the 50s B.C., came the discovery of "blowing" and the first sheets of glass for glazing.

By the 9th century, the glass-blowing technique had been perfected. The addition of lime in the 10th and 11th centuries made glass more stable and less susceptible to water damage.