Windows are the eyes of architecture, revealing not just what’s outside, but also the architect’s intentions and the building’s spirit. Far from being mere openings in a wall, windows serve as powerful design tools that shape spatial experiences, elicit emotions, and convey meaning.
Through their placement, proportion, and materiality, architects use fenestration to challenge conventions, frame narratives, and engage in dialogues about architecture, culture, and society. Whether framing grand landscapes, distorting reality, or evoking historical memory, windows can potentially transform how we interact with space and light.
The history of architecture is the history of the struggle for light.
– Le Corbusier 1
Historical Context: Windows as Status Symbols and Social Statements
Throughout history, windows have been used to express power, wealth, and social standing. The evolution from fortress-like medieval structures to more transparent and open buildings marked a shift in architectural intent.
Hardwick Hall, built by Bess of Hardwick in the late 16th century, exemplifies this transformation. The hall’s extensive use of glass was a direct response to the repeal of the glass tax, showcasing wealth and social openness in an era when glass was an expensive luxury. The phrase “more glass than wall” encapsulated the building’s radical transparency, challenging the notion of defensive architecture and instead embracing light, openness, and progress.
Don’t build a glass house if you’re worried about saving money on heating.
– Philip Johnson
Windows as Instruments of Emotion: The Jewish Museum in Berlin
Windows can act as instruments of emotion, shaping how a space is perceived and experienced. Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin is a striking example of this concept. Rather than serving conventional functional purposes, its windows are intentionally fragmented and irregular, evoking a sense of loss, disorientation, and rupture.
These jagged openings distort light and sightlines, reinforcing the narrative of trauma and fragmentation experienced by the Jewish community during the Holocaust. They do not offer comfortable views or a sense of refuge; instead, they are unsettled, reminding visitors of the cultural and historical wounds the museum seeks to commemorate. The windows become architectural scars—expressive voids that engage with memory and history.
Also marvelous in a room is the light that comes through the windows of a room and that belongs to the room.
– Louis Kahn 2
Windows as a Modernist Manifesto: Le Corbusier’s Ribbon Window
Le Corbusier’s pioneering use of the fenêtre en longueur (horizontal ribbon window) in Villa Savoye represents a radical departure from traditional openings. By replacing individual, framed views with continuous horizontal openings, he sought to democratize the experience of looking outward, emphasizing the collective rather than the individual.
This design move was not merely aesthetic but deeply ideological. The ribbon window connected the interior seamlessly with the exterior, eliminating hierarchical perspectives and reinforcing Corbusier’s vision of modern, machine-like living. The conflict it sparked between him and his contemporaries highlights how windows can serve as battlegrounds for architectural debate, challenging conventional notions of how buildings should relate to their surroundings.
Windows as Architectural Dialogue: Referencing and Reinterpreting the Past
Windows often serve as a medium for architectural discourse, allowing architects to engage in a silent yet profound conversation with their predecessors. Rem Koolhaas, for instance, integrates references to Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye in his work, using windows to explore and critique modernist principles.
Similarly, Robert Venturi’s Vanna Venturi House deliberately disrupts the modernist purity of the ribbon window by incorporating an eclectic mix of window styles. By assembling what he famously called a “collection of junk,” Venturi challenges the rigid doctrines of modernism, advocating for complexity and contradiction in architecture. His approach to fenestration underscores the postmodernist critique of form following function, instead embracing symbolism and layered meaning.
Windows and the Perception of Reality
Beyond aesthetics and symbolism, windows can manipulate perceptions of reality. Diller + Scofidio’s Slow House presents a provocative example: its oversized window is paired with a television screen displaying the same exterior view, creating a layered experience where representation and reality blur.
Similarly, in the Seattle Public Library by OMA, the integration of glazing and patterned surfaces causes interior reflections to merge seamlessly with exterior landscapes, dissolving the boundary between inside and outside. This strategic use of fenestration forces occupants to reconsider spatial relationships, perception, and the role of mediated reality in contemporary architecture.
Windows as Conceptual Statements: Challenging Functionality
In some cases, windows are employed purely as conceptual devices, challenging their conventional purpose. Giuseppe Terragni’s Casa del Fascio, famously analyzed by Peter Eisenman, features a window that does not open—rendering it functionally obsolete. Eisenman interprets this as a statement on the role of architecture as an intellectual pursuit rather than a purely utilitarian discipline. Here, the window is reduced to a visual and theoretical construct, questioning the necessity of practical function in architectural design.
Architecture can be about ideas that have nothing to do with actually even being in the building
– Professor Jeffrey Kipnis 3
Conclusion
Far from mere openings in a wall, windows serve as a fundamental architectural language: one that conveys meaning, provokes thought, and engages with the cultural, historical, and social dimensions of the built environment. Through strategic placement, scale, and form, architects harness fenestration to shape spatial experiences and contribute to broader architectural discourse. Whether as historical markers, emotional devices, social statements, or conceptual provocations, windows remain one of the most powerful architectural expression tools.
Additional Credits
Le Corbusier. Towards a New Architecture. Dover Publications, 1986 (originally published in 1923).
- Lobell, John. Louis Kahn: Architecture as Philosophy. Monacelli Press, 2020.
Colquhoun, Alan. Modern Architecture. Oxford University Press, 2002.
Curtis, William J. R. Modern Architecture Since 1900. Phaidon Press, 1996.
Eisenman, Peter. Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques. Monacelli Press, 2003.
Frampton, Kenneth. Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture. MIT Press, 1995.
Libeskind, Daniel. Breaking Ground: Adventures in Life and Architecture. Riverhead Books, 2004.
