Post 2000 Glassitechture
 

Just what in the world style of architecture will this stuff be considered in like 40 years? And when are architects going to move away from all glass architecture? Its getting kinda old, it all starting to look pretty much the same to me. Is it still post modernism? Your thoughts...

http://www.hvs.com/StaticContent/ima...%20MARQUIS.png

http://media.culturemap.com/crop/48/...n_Downtown.jpg

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/5468/4651e.jpg

http://www.bluemelon.com/photo/18602/882341.jpg

http://i11.tinypic.com/6jxp6ap.jpg

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b2...y_1495468a.jpg

http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/t...N/b7121d22.jpg
All from ssp

Glass is good. . .

. . .

If you are going to stuff people into a 50 story shoebox to work all day, wouldn't it make sense to give them as much natural light as possible?

Yes but isn't there an alternative in design? But more importantly, what is this current architectural period considered or what do you think it will be considered?

Minimalism generally ages better then crazy shapes/ colors. For example, I love 60s modernism, while post modernism tends to look a little... flamboyant.

I guess that since the cathedrals of the middle ages, people have tried to let as much light into buildings as they can by covering as much of the wall as possible with glass.

This latest trend might be seen as the latest espression of this age old impulse - perhaps an extravagent experiment ended by enviromental considerations - see this article

http://www.designbuild-network.com/f...breaking-glass

I don't know what today's architecture will be called in the future. In the past architects would form groups, name themselves, write manifestos and otherwise promote their ideas in magazines and exhibitions. Historians don't need to make up names and assign categories when the architects do it themselves. But architects don't really do that anymore, and aside from that, there's not an expectation that anyone follow one universal architecture and there's less thinking in terms of movements. Architects act more individually (maybe this is a way that historians can characterize today's architecture).

To demonstrate this of course you can look at the buildings you posted which really have nothing to do with each other except that they use glass.

And while they use glass, there hasn't been "an architecture of glass" for a long time. From about the 1870s to the 1930s, and especially in the 1920s, glass and its architectural implications were explored. There was the Glass Chain, which was an almost cult-like group which thought glass had utopian, spirit-cleansing properties. There were Mies van der Rohe's two glass tower designs which at the time were unbuildable but opened up a few theoretical ideas. One being that with opaque materials architects dealt with light and shadow while with glass architecture reflections join that group. Another idea is that a building could be both universal and contextual at the same time. Universal in that you could put the exact same building anywhere and local in that the glass would reflect it's surroundings (the building would literally mirror its context). Other ideas are that glass can let in more natural light and views, and that glass walls can connect with nature better. Glass walls also change the way that space was made, because before then, in order to enclose an area, you had to make an opaque wall which forces you to define space. But glass walls can enclose an area without defining space.

These are just a few examples of the theoretical sides of glass. Architecture "about" glass. But I think by the time world war 2 came around, architects had worked out the architectural implications of glass, and from then on glass was either used when technology allowed old ideas to be executed (like the 1970s context reflecting mirrored glass), or it was simply used as a building material like brick or concrete.

The examples you posted are of buildings that use glass simply as a building material like any other. There's lots of glass in those buildings because the architects thought there should be lots of windows. Big windows seem to be well suited to skycrapers. Other than in skyscrapers though, I don't think glass is particularly more common than brick or concrete or wood or metal.

In big cities, people like the sweeping views. I can't say it's possible to reverse this trend because it's so desirable for occupants unless cities establish design guidelines.

What will be the future of design is exploring more possibilities for glass curtain wall construction like altering shapes and projections instead of so many flat facades. It's already being done but perceived as expensive.

As for the name of these designs, the real estate market calls these all glass towers "modern" and much of the stuff pre-2002 "postmodern"