Glass has a history going back more than 4,000 years. The Romans were the first to glaze their windows to keep out wind and weather. But it was only the steady development of rolling and casting techniques in the 18th and above all the 19th century which allowed the production of ever larger, more transparent and thinner panes of glass.

The use of glass as a building material was encouraged in particular by garden design, as the protection of exotic plants required the construction of greenhouses and orangeries. In a record time of just five months, Joseph Paxton, himself a garden designer, put up the Crystal Palace in London's Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851. A totally glazed exhibition hall, of gigantic proportions by the standards of the time, it was a milestone in the history of building in glass. The result was a totally new spatial quality and a new aesthetic, as interior and exterior could now enter into a quite unique mutual relationship. Since then, architecture without glass has been inconceivable, and glass has been used as a construction material by renowned architects worldwide for industrial buildings and private houses. Glass masterpieces, erected in particular in combination with other materials, for example, wood, stone or steel, demonstrate the potential and variety of glass architecture.

This volume presents 24 contemporary buildings from all over the world in 300 illustrations and architectural drawings: particularly interesting examples of the interior and exterior use of glass in construction.