Transparency, Asepsis, and Purity: Modernist Design’s Obsession for Order
The concept of transparency is no stranger to graphic and industrial designers. In graphic design it can probably be traced back to Beatrice Warde’s The Crystal Goblet in the early 20th century, or the “neutrality” of typographic layout as medium of information heralded by a host of mid-century modernist masters. In industrial design, this concept enjoys even wider popularity. Since Adolf Loos’s publication of Ornament and Crime, the quest for transparency seems to have only enjoyed increasing traction before culminating in the form-follows-function doctrine at HfG Ulm. To paraphrase a review from the design blog Hi-ID, an object’s transparency in industrial design is achieved by a unity between how it’s made and how it’s perceived. That is to say, transparency is not only physical in the sense that something can be seen through, but is also phenomenal in that the structural logic is simple enough for abstraction and comprehension.
However, we must return to architecture to truly investigate such endless obsession with transparency. As Beatriz Colomina elucidated in her book X-Ray Architecture, the transparency of glass enabled a whole-new sensory experience for architecture in the early 20th century. Mies van der Rohe, for example, revealed in his concept sketch for Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper (1921) a palpable lust for a structure that uses steel frames as “bones” and glass as “skin”. Furthermore, the fascination for transparency stems from, perhaps unexpectedly, the tuberculosis (TB) that ravaged Europe, and the proliferation of X-Ray imaging technology during the same period. No obstructions other than internal organs can stand in front of the lens of X-Ray machines. Naturally, Mies made his sketch look like an X-Ray image of a “prototype skyscraper”. Glass, married with the X-Ray machine’s see-through vision, produces an “architectural X-Ray” that is deeply entangled with medical technology and human life.
