The Epic of the Window: The Eye of the Building

The window is the moment people decided that protection alone was not enough, cutting an opening in the wall so the world could enter. It is followed through childhood, rain, dawn, the seasons and snow, the windows of old Damascus and the Damascene house, coloured glass at Chartres, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque windows, then Le Corbusier's ribbon window, Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson's Glass House, the Seagram Building and the United Nations Headquarters. The mashrabiya, the window of the woman who waits, the immigrant's window and the window of the lost home sit beside the windows of Louis Kahn, Luis Barragán, Tadao Ando and Frank Lloyd Wright. Climate, double glazing, smart glass and prayer follow, and the window ends by speaking as the eye of the building.