The Architecture of the Window.

Edited by Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani. Tokyo: YKK Architectural Products Inc. 1995. [yen] 7,000.

This book is a miscellany. Fourteen critical essays on aspects of windows, then 12 `modern masters' tell us how they see the window in their own work. Apart from the general concern with windows there is almost no coherent theme; the different authors write about their own interests and concerns from their own individual viewpoints. I found it interesting and intelligent, but not much new ground is broken or new insight gained.

The subject is so vast that it encompasses a great part of architecture and the various authors can, and do, wander over a large field. In fact the book might simply have been called `Architecture', for in writing about windows they inevitably have to write about space, construction, aesthetic theory and most of the other aspects of our discipline.

The critical essays start, appropriately enough, with history. Joseph Rykwert gives us the story of windows and of architects from ancient Egypt to Le Corbusier, racily and amusingly written in just 12 pages. Wemer Oechslin writes about Alberti and the `Opening Absolute'. Alberti regarded the round window as the opening absolute and hence this essay explores the fascination with big round windows, as enjoyed by Ledoux, Kahn or Rossi.

Fritz Neumeyer chronicles the shift during the past century from the concept of the room with a window to the modern, particularly Miesian notion of fluid space. Peter Davey writes affectionately of the homely and human windows of the Arts and Crafts and of Art Nouveau, and suggests that we can learn from these movements how to make our buildings more friendly. Hartmut Frank tells of German systematised window systems between the wars leading to the great success of Neufert's standardised details, which the author finds not at all dehumanising, this is followed by Giorgio Muratore's description of less happy attempts to systematise construction in post-war Italy.

Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer records Frank Lloyd Wright's destruction of the box, and at the other extreme Marco de Michelis describes Tessenow's boxy architecture with its windows of carefully crafted design but abstract arrangement. Yehuda Safran writes on Adolf Loos, on the shock of the first unadorned facade in Vienna and of Loos's simplicity of form and complexity of thought. Bruno Reichlin and Giovanna D'Amia take opposite sides in the great debate between Le Corbusier and Perret over the relative merits of vertical and horizontal windows. Antonio Monestiroli writes about Mies van der Rohe and the seminal importance of the Brick Country House Project in the move from window as hole in the wall to walls as planes. Marco Visconti tells of Prouve and his metal shutters, shades and screens, and finally Marco Romanelli describes Gio Ponti making the window an object to look at, almost a piece of furniture.

With the exception of Rykwert's cheery piece, the critics are all terribly serious. So it comes as a bit of a relief to find the architects writing in a more light-hearted mood. Stirling, Piano, Foster, Nouvel, Rice, Maki, Ska, Moneo, Venturi, Grassi, Ando and Ungers give us their thoughts on windows in their own work, accompanied by very beautiful photographs and some clear diagrams. The writing by the various architects is surprisingly revealing about their real concerns and worries, often on issues which would strike an outsider as not being issues at all, and this makes a fascinating read. Throughout the book, much is made of the window as something to look out of but not into, yet here, in these architects' writings, one feels one is a voyeur peering into their innermost thoughts.