Curtain wall
A non-structural exterior wall that does not carry the weight of the building. It is typically designed to be removable and primarily serves as a protective covering, providing an aesthetic finish, weather protection, and insulation.
Texts From Articles (48)
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01│Antoni Gaudí: A “Sensible Architect”
Introduction The window is an extremely popular motif among architects. It would be natural to think that the possibilities for window design flourished after the mass production of plate glass began …
11 Dec 2024
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Architecture in Motion
Architect YU Momoeda, who is a long-time admirer of Shoei Yoh, participated in the Find and Tell residency program of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), providing his readings of the archival…
19 Mar 2025
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The Ingot Coffee Shop: Building as a Mass of Glass
Tomo Inoue, a building construction expert engaged in efforts to digitally reconstruct Shoei Yoh’s works using 3D scanners, explains the novelty of the Ingot Coffee Shop, an early work of architecture…
04 Oct 2024
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Windows of the Villejuif Temporary School｜Jean Prouvé’s Windows #3
After being driven out of the Maxéville Factory in Nancy, Prouvé was prepared to go into retirement at his self-built home. Yet, he would begin developing new window designs again after reuniting with…
28 Mar 2024
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The Prince Karuizawa
This pondside hotel consists of a 126-meter-long arced accommodation wing and a public wing. Each gu…
27 Feb 2025
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A Conversation with François Charbonnet (Made in)
Made in is a highly acclaimed architecture firm that was founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2003. François Charbonnet, one of its co-principals, formerly taught as a visiting professor at ETH Zurich a…
25 Jan 2024
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Windows of the Aichi University of the Artsby Junzo Yoshimura and Akio Okumura:The Concrete Science of Living with Nature
The Aichi University of the Arts was built to the designs of Junzo Yoshimura and Akio Okumura in 1966. Situated in the forested hills of Nagakute, Aichi, the campus was planned with consideration of e…
19 Jan 2024
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The Prince Karuizawa: The Materiality of Kiyoshi Seike’s Windows
The New Karuizawa Prince Hotel (now The Prince Karuizawa) built in 1982 was designed by Kiyoshi Seike. Seike is known as the architect of a number of Prince hotels locations, with Karuizawa being the …
12 Oct 2023
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The Experimental Design of the KATONO House in Sapporo
…lls that also free the openings from constraints. Curtain walls can be flexibly configured with cladding, insulation layers, and ventilation layers according to the desired performance levels, and con…
12 Apr 2023
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Screen Time
Screens are everywhere: stadiums, stations, billboards, buildings, refrigerators, thermostats, on our wrists, and in our hands. As a physical interface and virtual portal, screens are also the digital…
25 Jan 2023
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Conversation with EMI Architekten
Ron Edelaar, Elli Mosayebi, and Christian Inderbitzin founded EMI Architekten in Zurich in 2005. The office has developed a particular focus on housing and urban design in Switzerland through numerous…
15 Dec 2022
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Georgia O’Keeffe and Her Windows in New Mexico
At age 62, after living between New York City and New Mexico for many years, artist Georgia O’Keeffe made rural Northern New Mexico her permanent home. There, she lived between two adobe homes well in…
24 Jun 2022
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Issue 4: The Matsu Islands: Small Windows on the Frontier (Part 1)
The Matsu islands are located in northwest Taiwan, about as close to mainland China as you can get. It’s one of the farthest locations from Taiwan’s center, its sweet potato-shaped main is…
25 May 2022
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Terunobu Fujimori｜001: The Advent of Magical Light-Transmitting Surfaces, Glass Doors of the Hirano Residence
In this series, architectural historian and architect Terunobu Fujimori, who has traveled extensively to study buildings of various times and places, will be introducing a selection of notably intrigu…
09 Dec 2021
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Windows of the Prouvé House｜Jean Prouvé’s Windows #2
The Prouvé House is an intriguing example of a building that was made by piecing together leftover parts from past projects. In the second article of this series, Shin Yokoo examines how Prouvé incorp…
22 Oct 2021
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Four Tectonic Features that Reside Within Prouvé’s Window Details
Jean Prouvé was originally a metalworker by trade, but he became a leading modernist architect himself through collaborating with progressive architects such as Le Corbusier. He is particularly known …
04 Aug 2021
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A Conversation with Peter Märkli
Peter Märkli, one of Switzerland’s leading architects, started his career after meeting his mentor, the architect Rudolf Olgiati. In 1978 he established his own studio, Studio Märkli, in Zurich. Since…
17 May 2021
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An Interview with Richard McGuire, the author of Here: Everything is Transitory
Here is a graphic novel spanning more than 300 pages that allows readers to experience millions of years of time while observing a single corner of a room. Since its first publication in 2014, the wor…
26 Jan 2021
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Shizuka Yokomizo｜Today/Yesterday #1
Today/Yesterday is a series of columns written by London-based artist Shizuka Yokomizo. She weaves together photographs and text to show us what she observes through her windows as the everyday gentl…
14 Jan 2021
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Nature Behind a Curtain Wall
Clear air, born from the trees, the land. White steam that murmurs from a kitchen. Plants that sprout from the earth, and flowers floating in a vase. The pigments in the sky at sunset, primary colors …
02 Sep 2020
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A Conversation with Gigon / Guyer
The Chair of Architectural Behaviorology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), led by architect Momoyo Kaijima, conducted a series of interviews with architects based in Switz…
17 Jun 2020
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The Architecture of the Window
In addition to his design practice, the architect Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani has also cultivated a unique philosophical approach to the fields of architectural theory and history through his writings…
07 May 2020
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Chiharu Shiota The Sense of Daily Life and Smells Soaked into Windows Gives Power to My Work
Chiharu Shiota is an ever-active Berlin-based artist. In works such as her large-scale installations that tie spaces together with massive amounts of threads, she has used clothes, beds, suitcases, an…
15 Oct 2019
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Chapter 2: The frame – the window as optical device or trompe l’oeil from Mantegna to Ryan Gander
Whether facing outwards to the world or inwards to the self, an artist is often restrained by the framing device of the window—unable to break free from a rectilinear box or blank surface that demands…
03 Feb 2020
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The Bauhaus and Its Influence in Japan
The Bauhaus, founded in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, laid the foundations for modern design with its innovative curriculum that embraced the abstract and constructivist trends of the time. Despite operati…
09 Jul 2021
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Windows: Openings and devices
Laurent Stalder, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), has researched various threshold devices in architecture, and published about the topic under the title “Thr…
12 Dec 2018
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America (2)
French and German Traditions The French who had settled Quebec to trade fur descended south along the Mississippi River and founded New Orleans in Louisiana, while Germans in Pennsylvania settled area…
28 Feb 2017
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Part 3 Shokatei at Katsura Imperial Villa
Members of the Imperial Family were the first to enjoy the luxury of tea, a valuable item at that time, before the art of the tea ceremony was established by Rikyu. They built tearooms called kizoku-g…
03 Oct 2018
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Spaces In Between
Korean artist Do Ho Suh, who is perhaps best known for his translucent fabric recreations of real buildings, has continued to explore the relationship between existence and space through his work. In …
01 Oct 2018
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Part 5: To China International Window City!
The aperture in Japanese architecture is the “ma,” or “space between objects.” The aperture in western architecture is the “hole.” What is it in Chinese architecture, then? This is a study on the as o…
22 Aug 2018
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The Window is the Difference between the Life and Death of a Space
There are many things you can understand about a company’s image by looking at the way it makes use of windows and glazing. Hernan Diaz Alonso, who is known as the director of the Southern California …
11 Oct 2016
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Architectural Intention behind Technology
Reiser + Umemoto is the architect duo behind the design of the O-14 office tower in Dubai. What ultimately supported the realization of the complex architectural design that could only be developed wi…
27 Sep 2016
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Windows as Connectors between the Inside and Outside
Architect Ryue Nishizawa has designed a wide variety of projects, including houses, a church, a station square, and art museums. He has also found international success through SANAA, a practice that …
06 Sep 2016
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How Technology Changes the Future of Windows
Nader Tehrani is an Iranian-American designer who has completed numerous architectural projects worldwide. Having served as the Head of the Department of Architecture at MIT from 2010 to 2014, he is n…
06 Sep 2016
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“Why is This Guy Asking Me to Think about the U-value and the Leakage?”
Associate Professor Yusuke Obuchi of the University of Tokyo conducted a series of interviews with architects / architectural critic working at the forefront of the field. In this session, he spoke wi…
06 Sep 2016
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The Overhanging Village : Kinnaur District, India, Part 1
In the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh is a region inhabited by people known as the Kinnauris. It is a high-elevation region located in the northwest Himalayans, with the Tibet Autonomous Re…
14 Mar 2018
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Boundary Window
“En: art of nexus” is the theme of the Japan Pavilion at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia 2016, one of the world’s largest modern architecture festivals. How are …
27 May 2016
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la fenêtre à la française
Six years have passed since I arrived in Paris. Although my daily life has been changing and evolving every moment, Paris has kept the skyline since it has been built. The scenery of the small windows…
17 Sep 2015
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Part 2: Apertures for View
Apertures have many purposes of uses. They are used as light sources, as ventilation, and as portals through which people pass. In each of these examples, they are opened to allow some physical thing …
18 Oct 2017
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Shizuka Yokomizo + Takashi Homma The Origin of the Idea
One of artist Shizuka Yokomizo’s emblematic works is her Stranger series, in which she has used photography to capture the distance between herself and others across windows. The artist’s personal exp…
26 Sep 2016
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Part 1: Apertures for Light
Fleeting and weak though it is, light in Scandinavia has a mysterious kind of allure to it. Could it not be that the peoples of Scandinavia worship the light of the sun precisely because it fades so e…
20 Sep 2017
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Terunobu Fujimori “Holes”
Terunobu Fujimori has been producing highly original architecture that makes use of nature, such as wood, soil, and plants, as exemplified in his works including the Flying Mud Boat, Grass Roof, and M…
15 Jun 2021
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Giving Color to Windows
Textile coordinator/designer Yoko Ando has been directing how textiles are used around windows in the work of many architects both young and old. Spaces can be enriched by adding color to their window…
18 Mar 2015
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Cats, Fashion, and Windows
Madoka Hattori is the director of ilove.cat, an online magazine themed on cats and creators, and a freelance editor for honeyee.com and .fatale, two prominent online fashion magazines that define Toky…
25 Nov 2014
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Part 3: The Widely Variant Windows of Modern Chinese Architecture
The aperture in Japanese architecture is the “ma,” or “space between objects.” The aperture in western architecture is the “hole.” What is it in Chinese architecture, then? This is a study on the as o…
08 Mar 2018
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Hiroshi Nakamura Windows and Affection
The following interview was held with architect Hiroshi Nakamura, who has been gaining recognition for the numerous projects that he has designed with the theme of creating a sense of affection. We as…
19 Aug 2013
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Concept of a Window
Mr. Taro Igarashi interviewed Architect Hiroshi Hara who gave influence and posed problems. The interview was attempted to ascertain the results of human settlement survey and the concept of windows, …
24 May 2013
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Window and Sharing (First Half)
Interviewed are now widely noted architects, Yuri Naruse and Jun Inokuma, who are well known for their project on the theme of “sharing.” The talk is centered on the role and enchantment as well as a …
24 May 2013