{"title":"透明:丹尼尔-尤特(Daniel Jütte)的《一种理念的物质史》(评论","authors":"Kjetil Fallan","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926338","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Transparency: The Material History of an Idea</em> by Daniel Jütte <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Kjetil Fallan (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Transparency: The Material History of an Idea</em> By Daniel Jütte. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2023. Pp. 512. <p>The scope of Daniel Jütte's material history of the idea of transparency is daunting and might at first seem excessively so. Covering antiquity to the present, and with no clear-cut geographical demarcation, the study is instead defined by a single idea and a single material. Immediately narrowing it down further to equate glass with plate glass, or more precisely glass windows, and declaring that the idea of \"transparency first and foremost has been an architectural experience\" (p. 6), the project takes on more manageable—but no less impressive—dimensions. For students of material culture, this quick sidelining of nonarchitectural vitreous transparency (think of eyeglasses, drinking vessels, lighting fixtures, etc.) can appear slightly dismissive but ultimately comes off as justifiable in the name of coherency and clarity of argument.</p> <p>A key ambition of this book is to problematize the teleological bent of conventional narratives of how glass windows became a defining feature of our built environment. This is pursued chiefly by reconceptualizing the historical development of architectural glass as a complex movement of ebbs and flows, of fits and starts, of forces and counterforces. It is a long and winding road Jütte guides us along. Technological advances in the production of plate glass are given due attention, but the book places greater significance on the social, aesthetic, and material values assigned to glass when explaining its changing status. We learn that when glass was first used to seal windows in ancient Rome, it was a niche product primarily applied in bath houses, where it was particularly important to let light in without letting heat out. But it was a very different kind of building that for centuries would become the main arena for the discourse on architectural glass: the church. In explaining the extraordinary role of glass windows in church architecture, Jütte turns to the dogma of \"divine light\" in Christian theology. Crucially, the function of glass windows in churches was to let that light into the room, not to provide views of the outside. The equation of architectural glass with transparency in the metaphorical sense would have to await the emergence of glass windows one could actually see through, as well as the increasing articulation of \"openness\" as an intellectual ideal from the Reformation to the Enlightenment onward. Jütte navigates these open waters in confident and convincing ways, and he skillfully draws on a vast array of source material, from travelogues and architectural treaties to poetry and marketing material.</p> <p>One of the book's great strengths is the way it shows how the architecture of transparency generated as much anguish and anxiety as it delivered on its promise of health, happiness, and enlightenment. A particularly fine, but sinister, example of this is the chapter discussing how glass architecture has <strong>[End Page 711]</strong> served totalitarian regimes with the same fervor as it has democratic ones, turning insight into surveillance and outsight into exposure (ch. 14). In short, transparency is just as ideologically promiscuous as is modernist design itself.</p> <p><em>Transparency</em> is primarily a history of Western culture. Brief excursions to select \"non-Western\" locations in pre- and early modern times serve as reminders that glass was not always and everywhere the obvious, or even preferred, window-sealing technology. These prompts function well as counterpoints in the general argument that it was a range of social, cultural, religious, economic, technological, and ecological reasons that eventually established the primacy of architectural glass as both material and metaphor of transparency in, and ultimately beyond, Europe. However, throughout the book, the geographical focus remains fairly narrow, with examples rarely venturing outside (present-day) Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Britain. Given that Jütte points out that \"glass architecture has become a global phenomenon\" (p. 383), it would have strengthened his argument if the four final chapters, which deal with the nineteenth century to the present, had drawn on a more diverse sample of case studies, including for instance the function and meaning of...</p> </p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Transparency: The Material History of an Idea by Daniel Jütte (review)\",\"authors\":\"Kjetil Fallan\",\"doi\":\"10.1353/tech.2024.a926338\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Transparency: The Material History of an Idea</em> by Daniel Jütte <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Kjetil Fallan (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Transparency: The Material History of an Idea</em> By Daniel Jütte. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2023. Pp. 512. <p>The scope of Daniel Jütte's material history of the idea of transparency is daunting and might at first seem excessively so. Covering antiquity to the present, and with no clear-cut geographical demarcation, the study is instead defined by a single idea and a single material. Immediately narrowing it down further to equate glass with plate glass, or more precisely glass windows, and declaring that the idea of \\\"transparency first and foremost has been an architectural experience\\\" (p. 6), the project takes on more manageable—but no less impressive—dimensions. For students of material culture, this quick sidelining of nonarchitectural vitreous transparency (think of eyeglasses, drinking vessels, lighting fixtures, etc.) can appear slightly dismissive but ultimately comes off as justifiable in the name of coherency and clarity of argument.</p> <p>A key ambition of this book is to problematize the teleological bent of conventional narratives of how glass windows became a defining feature of our built environment. This is pursued chiefly by reconceptualizing the historical development of architectural glass as a complex movement of ebbs and flows, of fits and starts, of forces and counterforces. It is a long and winding road Jütte guides us along. Technological advances in the production of plate glass are given due attention, but the book places greater significance on the social, aesthetic, and material values assigned to glass when explaining its changing status. We learn that when glass was first used to seal windows in ancient Rome, it was a niche product primarily applied in bath houses, where it was particularly important to let light in without letting heat out. But it was a very different kind of building that for centuries would become the main arena for the discourse on architectural glass: the church. In explaining the extraordinary role of glass windows in church architecture, Jütte turns to the dogma of \\\"divine light\\\" in Christian theology. Crucially, the function of glass windows in churches was to let that light into the room, not to provide views of the outside. The equation of architectural glass with transparency in the metaphorical sense would have to await the emergence of glass windows one could actually see through, as well as the increasing articulation of \\\"openness\\\" as an intellectual ideal from the Reformation to the Enlightenment onward. Jütte navigates these open waters in confident and convincing ways, and he skillfully draws on a vast array of source material, from travelogues and architectural treaties to poetry and marketing material.</p> <p>One of the book's great strengths is the way it shows how the architecture of transparency generated as much anguish and anxiety as it delivered on its promise of health, happiness, and enlightenment. A particularly fine, but sinister, example of this is the chapter discussing how glass architecture has <strong>[End Page 711]</strong> served totalitarian regimes with the same fervor as it has democratic ones, turning insight into surveillance and outsight into exposure (ch. 14). In short, transparency is just as ideologically promiscuous as is modernist design itself.</p> <p><em>Transparency</em> is primarily a history of Western culture. Brief excursions to select \\\"non-Western\\\" locations in pre- and early modern times serve as reminders that glass was not always and everywhere the obvious, or even preferred, window-sealing technology. These prompts function well as counterpoints in the general argument that it was a range of social, cultural, religious, economic, technological, and ecological reasons that eventually established the primacy of architectural glass as both material and metaphor of transparency in, and ultimately beyond, Europe. However, throughout the book, the geographical focus remains fairly narrow, with examples rarely venturing outside (present-day) Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Britain. Given that Jütte points out that \\\"glass architecture has become a global phenomenon\\\" (p. 383), it would have strengthened his argument if the four final chapters, which deal with the nineteenth century to the present, had drawn on a more diverse sample of case studies, including for instance the function and meaning of...</p> </p>\",\"PeriodicalId\":49446,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Technology and Culture\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.8000,\"publicationDate\":\"2024-05-09\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Technology and Culture\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"98\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926338\",\"RegionNum\":3,\"RegionCategory\":\"哲学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q2\",\"JCRName\":\"HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Technology and Culture","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926338","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
摘要
审查人: 透明度:丹尼尔-尤特(Daniel Jütte)的《思想的物质史》(The Material History of an Idea by Daniel Jütte Kjetil Fallan (bio) Transparency:一个理念的物质史》,丹尼尔-尤特著。纽黑文和伦敦:耶鲁大学出版社,2023 年。页码512.丹尼尔-尤特 (Daniel Jütte) 的这本《透明理念的物质史》范围之广令人生畏,乍看之下似乎有些过分。这项研究涵盖了从古至今的各个时期,没有明确的地域划分,而是以单一的理念和单一的材料来界定。研究范围立即进一步缩小,将玻璃等同于平板玻璃,更确切地说,是玻璃窗,并宣称 "透明的概念首先是一种建筑体验"(第 6 页),从而使该项目变得更加易于管理,但也同样令人印象深刻。对于研究物质文化的学生来说,这种对非建筑玻璃体透明度(如眼镜、酒具、照明设备等)的快速忽略可能会显得有些轻视,但最终为了论证的连贯性和清晰度,这种忽略还是情有可原的。本书的一个主要目标是质疑关于玻璃窗如何成为我们建筑环境的一个决定性特征的传统叙事的目的论倾向。这主要是通过重新认识建筑玻璃的历史发展,将其视为一个起伏、起伏、力量与反力量的复杂运动。这是一条漫长而曲折的道路,尤特引领我们一路前行。书中对平板玻璃生产技术的进步给予了应有的关注,但在解释玻璃地位的变化时,书中更重视赋予玻璃的社会、美学和物质价值。我们了解到,当玻璃在古罗马首次被用来密封窗户时,它只是一种小众产品,主要应用于澡堂,在那里,让光线进入而不放出热量尤为重要。但几个世纪以来,一种截然不同的建筑成为了建筑玻璃的主要讨论场所:教堂。在解释玻璃窗在教堂建筑中的非凡作用时,Jütte 引用了基督教神学中 "神圣之光 "的教条。最重要的是,教堂玻璃窗的功能是让光线进入室内,而不是提供外部景观。将建筑玻璃等同于隐喻意义上的透明,需要等待人们能够真正看透玻璃窗的出现,以及从宗教改革到启蒙运动,"开放 "作为一种思想理想的日益明确。尤特以自信和令人信服的方式驾驭着这些开放的水域,他巧妙地利用了大量的原始资料,从游记和建筑条约到诗歌和营销材料。本书的一大亮点是,它展示了透明建筑如何在兑现健康、快乐和启迪的承诺的同时,也带来了痛苦和焦虑。在这一点上,一个特别好但也特别阴险的例子是,有一章讨论了玻璃建筑是如何 [完 711 页] 以同样的热情为极权主义政权服务的,就像它为民主政权服务一样,把洞察力变成了监视,把洞察力变成了暴露(第 14 章)。简而言之,透明性与现代主义设计本身一样,都是意识形态上的滥觞。透明度主要是一部西方文化史。对前现代和现代早期某些 "非西方 "地点的简短游览提醒人们,玻璃并不总是、也不是随处可见,甚至不是首选的窗户密封技术。这些提示很好地反驳了一般论点,即是一系列社会、文化、宗教、经济、技术和生态原因最终确立了建筑玻璃作为透明材料和隐喻的首要地位,并最终超越了欧洲。然而,在整本书中,地理重点仍然相当狭窄,例子很少涉及(今天的)意大利、法国、德国、瑞士和英国以外的地区。鉴于 Jütte 指出 "玻璃建筑已成为一种全球现象"(第 383 页),如果在涉及十九世纪至今的最后四章中采用更多样化的案例研究样本,包括玻璃的功能和意义等,将会加强他的论点。
Transparency: The Material History of an Idea by Daniel Jütte (review)
Reviewed by:
Transparency: The Material History of an Idea by Daniel Jütte
Kjetil Fallan (bio)
Transparency: The Material History of an Idea By Daniel Jütte. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2023. Pp. 512.
The scope of Daniel Jütte's material history of the idea of transparency is daunting and might at first seem excessively so. Covering antiquity to the present, and with no clear-cut geographical demarcation, the study is instead defined by a single idea and a single material. Immediately narrowing it down further to equate glass with plate glass, or more precisely glass windows, and declaring that the idea of "transparency first and foremost has been an architectural experience" (p. 6), the project takes on more manageable—but no less impressive—dimensions. For students of material culture, this quick sidelining of nonarchitectural vitreous transparency (think of eyeglasses, drinking vessels, lighting fixtures, etc.) can appear slightly dismissive but ultimately comes off as justifiable in the name of coherency and clarity of argument.
A key ambition of this book is to problematize the teleological bent of conventional narratives of how glass windows became a defining feature of our built environment. This is pursued chiefly by reconceptualizing the historical development of architectural glass as a complex movement of ebbs and flows, of fits and starts, of forces and counterforces. It is a long and winding road Jütte guides us along. Technological advances in the production of plate glass are given due attention, but the book places greater significance on the social, aesthetic, and material values assigned to glass when explaining its changing status. We learn that when glass was first used to seal windows in ancient Rome, it was a niche product primarily applied in bath houses, where it was particularly important to let light in without letting heat out. But it was a very different kind of building that for centuries would become the main arena for the discourse on architectural glass: the church. In explaining the extraordinary role of glass windows in church architecture, Jütte turns to the dogma of "divine light" in Christian theology. Crucially, the function of glass windows in churches was to let that light into the room, not to provide views of the outside. The equation of architectural glass with transparency in the metaphorical sense would have to await the emergence of glass windows one could actually see through, as well as the increasing articulation of "openness" as an intellectual ideal from the Reformation to the Enlightenment onward. Jütte navigates these open waters in confident and convincing ways, and he skillfully draws on a vast array of source material, from travelogues and architectural treaties to poetry and marketing material.
One of the book's great strengths is the way it shows how the architecture of transparency generated as much anguish and anxiety as it delivered on its promise of health, happiness, and enlightenment. A particularly fine, but sinister, example of this is the chapter discussing how glass architecture has [End Page 711] served totalitarian regimes with the same fervor as it has democratic ones, turning insight into surveillance and outsight into exposure (ch. 14). In short, transparency is just as ideologically promiscuous as is modernist design itself.
Transparency is primarily a history of Western culture. Brief excursions to select "non-Western" locations in pre- and early modern times serve as reminders that glass was not always and everywhere the obvious, or even preferred, window-sealing technology. These prompts function well as counterpoints in the general argument that it was a range of social, cultural, religious, economic, technological, and ecological reasons that eventually established the primacy of architectural glass as both material and metaphor of transparency in, and ultimately beyond, Europe. However, throughout the book, the geographical focus remains fairly narrow, with examples rarely venturing outside (present-day) Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Britain. Given that Jütte points out that "glass architecture has become a global phenomenon" (p. 383), it would have strengthened his argument if the four final chapters, which deal with the nineteenth century to the present, had drawn on a more diverse sample of case studies, including for instance the function and meaning of...
期刊介绍:
Technology and Culture, the preeminent journal of the history of technology, draws on scholarship in diverse disciplines to publish insightful pieces intended for general readers as well as specialists. Subscribers include scientists, engineers, anthropologists, sociologists, economists, museum curators, archivists, scholars, librarians, educators, historians, and many others. In addition to scholarly essays, each issue features 30-40 book reviews and reviews of new museum exhibitions. To illuminate important debates and draw attention to specific topics, the journal occasionally publishes thematic issues. Technology and Culture is the official journal of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT).